Chlodnik, cold beetroot soup

Dear all,

Beetroot is an amazing vegetable: Its wonderful purple colour always amazes me when I touch it. Beetroots deliver a wealth of nutrition, taste sweet and can be cooked with ease. I love beetroot, but I generally stick to the easy way of turning it into a salad.

The other day, I watched a TV show about Polish food. The chef turned beetroots into a cold soup with the strange name chlodnik.

I thought this is a brillant idea, a kind of Polish gazpacho. So I set out to look for a recipe. Unfortunately, there are plenty of vastly diverging recipes. I decided to simplify and to restrain from strange ingredients like the brining liquid of pickles.

Unfortunately, for the original chlodnik horseradish seems to be a rather important ingredient. I could not find horseradish in my supermarket. They even were out of wasabi, the Japanese variety used for sushi. So I added some spice by ground chillie powder.

Although it is simple, it is amazing how refreshing it tastes. The beautiful pink colour of chlodnik makes it a great dish for a buffet. It is also a great starter for a dinner party because it tastes best after a night in the fridge.

Chlodnik, Polish Gazpacho

Ingredients (for 4 servings)
 

• 3 beetroots (about 500 grams)
• 1 medium potato
• 1 ½ cups stock
• 1 medium onion
• 1 cucumber
• 2 cups curd (yoghurt)
• 4 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
• salt
• chillie powder
• chives
• 4 tablespoons sour cream

Method:

Peel the beetroot and the potato and cut into small pieces to reduce the cooking time. Place them into a pressure cooker. Add the stock – vegetable or chicken stock will do – and ½ tablespoon salt and cook for 10 minutes after the first whistle. You can also cook the vegetables in a normal pot until tender. Let the vegetables cool down.

Peel the cucumber and the onion. Halve the cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.

Place the cucumber and the onion into a blender.

Add the cool beetroots and potato cubes and the cooking liquid. Blend until rather smooth.

Add the curd, the chillie powder and the lemon juice and blend again.  Adjust the seasoning according to your taste. You can replace the lemon juice with vinegar.

For serving, place the soup into bowls; add a dollop of sour cream and sprinkle with chives. Some people prefer dill instead of chives, but it is difficult to find here in India. You can replace the sour cream with thick curd or cream cheese.
 

Beetroots - red and ultrahealthy

 

A flamboyant energizer

The humble beetroot has long been somewhat neglected in European kitchens. Nowadays it is enjoying a revival in British as the center of colorful salads and other fashionable concoctions. I even observed on TV how a famous Indian chef in London stuffed his samosas with a beetroot mixture.
This revival is well deserved. Already the ancient Romans appreciated the health properties and the sweet flavor of this brilliantly colored root. This color comes from the high iron content making it an excellent blood tonic and purifier.
Beetroot also contains a lot of vitamin C, folic acid, potassium, and silica. It qualifies as a remedy for eating too much salt and lowering blood pressure. Silica aids the uptake of calcium. Large doses of this vegetable are used to treat cancer in Europe. Beetroot also increases the body’s absorption of oxygen by as much as 400 per cent.

Beetroot Salad

I cannot help but feel intimidated when I start browsing the web in search of healthy recipes. There is a tidal wave of information out there. When I read through articles, I cannot fend off the feeling I am doing something wrong or not enough. Somehow, I never seem to be able to eat enough vegetables and fruits. Somehow, my appetite does not conform to the never-ending lists of super foods you should consume. Somehow, I feel being torn between the urge to eat healthy and the need not to indulge in naughty pleasures.

Fundamentally, I believe in home cooking without spending the full day in the kitchen or doing shopping. Although I might slip and indulge in naughty stuff from the supermarket, I continuously enlarge my repertoire of dishes that put the right kind of food into our bodies.

One of them is this layered beetroot salad. It is loaded with nutritional goodness. Beetroot and walnuts regularly feature in the many lists of super foods. Sage is known for its benefits, and at this point most of us know the virtues of olive oil. Blue cheese may be an acquired taste for some. If you don’t like it, exchange it for any other cheese or simply skip it. However, I discovered a new study. According to its findings, you should make blue cheese a regular addition to your diet if you like the taste.

Thanks to the proteins of the cheese, this salad makes an excellent starter for a festive menu and is a complete light meal by itself. I present it in layers because it looks a lot nicer than mixing all the ingredients together.
 

Happy cooking always!

Kornelia Santoro with family

Ingredients (for 4 servings):

• 500 grams beetroot
• 200 grams blue cheese
• 100 grams walnuts
• 10 sage leaves
• 3 red chillies, preferably Thai
• 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 9 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 small cloves garlic
• Salt
• Pepper

Method:

Boil the beetroots until they are tender. I use a pressure cooker for this purpose. Place the beetroots into the pot, cover them with water, add salt and cook them for half an hour after the first whistle. In a normal pot they take about three times as long. Beetroots are cooked when the skin comes off easily. Let the beetroots cool down, then peel and slice them.

Carefully slice the blue cheese and keep aside. I used Gorgonzola made in Auroville, which I can recommend. However, any blue cheese will do. If you don’t like blue cheese, take any other cheese. I have to say, the contrast between the tender sweetness of the beetroots and the tangy, rich saltiness of the blue cheese combined with crunchy toasted walnuts makes this salad so attractive for me.

Take a small pan and roast the walnuts carefully over a small fire. When roasting nuts, you have to watch them. Roasting turns easily into burning when the process is left unattended. Place the roasted walnuts on a plate for later use.

Pour the vinegar into a vessel. Add about one teaspoon of salt and pepper according to your taste. Wash the chillies and chop them finely. The bright red adds a nice colour contrast to the purple beetroots. If you want your salad spicy, keep the seeds. For a milder zing remove the seeds.

Peel the garlic cloves. Spread about three tablespoons olive oil into the pan you used for toasting the walnuts. Add the garlic cloves to infuse the oil. Turn on the heat. When the oil is hot, add the sage leaves and fry them until crispy. Spread them on a kitchen towel to drain excess oil. These crispy sage leaves add another texture and layer of taste to the salad. However, they don’t stay crispy long so you need to do this shortly before serving the salad. If you don’t want go to this trouble, skip it. The salad is nice also without crispy fried leaves.
 
Finally, it is time to assemble the salad. Add the remaining olive oil and the garlic infused oil from the pan to the vinegar and stir well. Layer the beetroots and the blue cheese on the plates. Sprinkle the toasted walnuts, the chillies and the crispy sage leaves over the vegetables and the cheese. Spread the vinaigrette over all the ingredients. There should be enough dressing on the plates to coat every beetroot slice. Enjoy!

Rainbow Frittata

Sometimes our world seems to crash. Whenever I open the newspaper or watch the news, I cannot help but feel depressed: bombs, bad economy, corruption. The list of tragedies goes on and on.

My only recipe for making the world a better place is to try and live as well as I can, to try to be the best person I can be. Both my men can tell you that I lapse many times. But I know that occasionally I manage to bring a smile to their faces. Our home is generally a peaceful and welcoming place; my son knows he can always invite his friends over – also on short notice. When somebody drops in, I am always able to offer lunch or dinner. It might not be an elaborate dish, but even on a rainy day I normally have a pasta sauce or two stashed away in my freezer.

In case I don’t want to make pasta, a frittata is a great way of dishing up a tasty and healthy meal in no time at all. Basically, a frittata is the Italian version of the French omelette. With one big difference: An omelette is cooked only on one side, while the frittata is flipped or finished under the grill. Like pizza, anything goes with a frittata. You can use every kind of vegetables, herbs, cheese, fish and shellfish, bacon, sausage and salami slices. Only one ingredient remains the same. You cannot make frittata without eggs.

I call the recipe here Rainbow frittata, because I tried to use as many different coloured vegetables as possible. This recipe is only a guideline. Just take whatever you have in the kitchen, throw the ingredients into a pan and spill some eggs over the mixture. In most cases you can enjoy a delicious, light meal.

Wishing you happy cooking, always!

Kornelia Santoro with family

 

Rainbow Frittata

Ingredients (for 4 servings):

• 6 eggs
• 1 big carrot
• 1 medium beetroot
• 1 bundle spring onions
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 bundle parsley
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Method:

Clean and chop the spring onions. Crush the garlic. Peel and grate the carrot and the beetroot. Wash the parsley and chop it.

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the spring onions, the carrot and the beetroot over a low fire until they are soft, around three to four minutes. While the vegetables are getting done, crack the eggs into a bowl and season them with salt and pepper. Mix the eggs well with a fork.

Add the parsley and the garlic to the vegetables and fry for another minute. Spread the egg mixture over the vegetables and cover the pan with a lid.

When the egg has largely set, flip the frittata or finish it under the grill. All my pans have plastic handles, that’s why I always flip my frittata. This is a bit tricky, but not as difficult as it sounds. I loosen the border of the frittata with a spatula and make sure that it does not stick to the pan. Then I place a flat plate over the pan and turn it. Now the frittata should be in one piece on your plate. From the plate I slide the frittata back into the pan and give it another two minutes.

If you use the grill, just place the pan under the grill and wait that the egg-mixture takes on a lovely, bronze colour. Enjoy!