Beet Salad (You Want to Try This)

Now we get into the territory that’s straight plagiarism. This recipe, and one or two others in this collection, were dishes created and developed by Barbara Lynch and served at her extraordinary restaurant No. 9 Park. As garde manger there, I made this dish several thousand times at least. It’s important for me to include here, since they’re a big part of what I know how to do, and have shaped the way I think about food, prep, and presentation. For instance, this beet salad is a perfect demonstration of usable scrap – you prepare the beets so that they’re devilishly interesting to look at, but in doing so, end up with a lot of scrap. That scrap is cleverly incorporated not just into the dish, but into the design, and the result it’s just a great example of the perfectly streamlined thinking that separates the good cooks from the great chefs. I believe that after making tens of thousands of these, Chef Lynch finally took it off the menu – but it was a popular dish with an enterprising presentation.

Aside from the countless times I made this at the restaurant, I’ve done it once or twice at private parties, and I will fucking guarantee that it is a jaw dropper. It’s virtually impossible to make in small quantities, and definitely not worth the effort (although you can take the ingredients and come up with a different presentation on a smaller scale, with similarly delightful if not as awe-inspiring results) if you’re dining alone or with one other. I don’t guarantee that this dish is exactly the way they made it at No. 9 Park, but any differences are simply because I forgot how it’s done, not because I’ve made it better. If anyone reading this is somehow associated with No. 9 Park and wants me to take this down, write to me. I’d be more than happy to either accommodate or tell you to go fuck yourself, depending on who you are.

There’s one final reason I need to include this dish. When people find out that I cook, they often say, Oh, what do you like to cook? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that question, and I always find it a strange one, and difficult to answer. I usually say, Oh, you know, pastas, comfort foods, whatever… But that just sounds so lame. The truth of the matter is that I like to cook foods that make people like something that they thought they didn’t. That’s one of the cooler things I know of in this whole racket. Take something like beets – a lot of people avoid them, not because they don’t taste great, but because most people really don’t know what to do with them. I would say that 100% of the people that have been kind of iffy on beets have become converts once they try this dish – myself included – since the preparation and presentation are so overwhelmingly delightful. There are a couple other examples of dishes that work like that for me but this is usually the pinnacle.

A note about the blue cheese: No. 9 Park used Great Hill Blue, which was local and an amazing cheese. If that’s not available near you (it generally is throughout the northeast) you should try to find one that matches it’s qualities: it was creamy and piercing – a must to compliment the beets – but not so much of either that it stole the show from the beets. Beets are straight sugar (and in fact the number 2 commodity crop used to create granulized sugar around the world). If you end up with a blue that’s more creamy and broad, it won’t work as well. You need that sharp jab of blue cheese flavor for this really to pop. Also, Great Hill Blue has thin needles of mold running through it, but lots of white – if the blue you select is just shitty with blue/green mold, you won’t be able to form the squares necessary for the presentation – they’ll just crumble. So make sure that you’ve got a firm blue on your hands, and for chrissakes, this is an elaborate preparation, so don’t skimp on the blue cheese and get something run-of-the-mill.

Ingredients:

• 6 large beets
• 1 lb blue cheese (yeah, you’re going to have extra)
• 1 bunch frisee
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Thinly sliced chives
• 2 thin slices of brioche

Directions:

Start by rinsing the beets to remove as much of the sand and grit as possible. Place them in a deep baking dish or pot, fill with about an inch of water, cover tightly with tin foil, and place in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. When they’re fork tender, they’re done.

While the beets are cooking, you can begin to prepare the cheese. Here’s what we’re going for in the end: a checker-board pattern of nine squares, alternating beet and cheese. To get this right, they all need to be the same size and thickness.

To create the cheese squares, you’re going to need flat sheets of blue cheese. This is where the crumble starts to become a factor, and believe me, it can be maddening. Ideally, your cheese monger will use a wire cutter to cut through the center of wheel of cheese, then move the wire a half inch over and cut again, then another half inch, and so on. You should need about three sheets that are that size. But if you can only get a wedge, get a large one, and cut ½-inch thick sheets yourself. Do this so that the bottom of the wheel is sitting on the cutting board, (if it were whole it would be positioned so it couldn’t role away) and slice straight down – you need to make squares here, so be logical about it. Be very careful and get this part right – the whole dish is depending on it.

 

Once you’ve got your ½-inch thick sheets, cut them into roughtly 1½-inch squares. Put them in one layer (you can stack them with parchment paper in between) and leave them in the fridge – you can do this the day before, but either way, you want them to be cold when you plate them so they should stay in the fridge till you’re ready to go.

When the beets are fork tender, they’re done. Let them cool (you can strain and reserve their cooking liquid for another use). When they’re cool enough to handle, slice the very end off, then using your fingers, peel away the skin. It should slide right off. Discard the skin and rinse the beets so that there is no grit or dirt on them.

When all the beets are peeled, your hands will be good and stained red. Lay the beets on the cutting board, and cut them into cubes that are the exact same size as your cheese squares. You should be able to put a cheese square up to one face of the cube and have it be flush. Reserve all of the oddly shaped ends of the beets – very important! Then slice the cube into ½-inch squares, the same thickness as the cheese squares. Put these in the fridge until they’re chilled. Now mince the the usable beet scrap till it’s very fine and set aside, in the fridge.

Now let’s make the croutons – I can’t remember exactly what croutons were used in the beet salad at No. 9 Park, but at some point, I just moved to straight, unflavored brioche croutons. It’s important to make these small, so make sure you’ve got a good brioche. Chop it into quarter-inch cubes, toss with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, then lay flat on a baking sheet and put into a 375-degree oven until they’re golden, shaking the pan occasionally. Set these aside when they’re done.

OK, it’s time to plate everything. Remove the minces beets, add about a tablespoon and a half of finely minced chives, about two tsp each of lemon juice and olive oil, salt and pepper, and toss. You need a ring mold to construct this – I use one of those little tomato paste cans with both ends removed (and well washed).

Then take the very center of the head of frisee, where it’s most yellow and curly (save the rest for another use), and toss it with a pinch of chives, a dash of olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper.

So now you’ve got two little bowls with minced beets in one and the frisee in the other. You’ve got your (ideally chilled) plates laid out and you’re ready to go.

You can do 5 pieces of cheese or 5 pieces of beets – up to you. The important thing is that you start with the cheese first, so that your hands don’t stain the squares red. So since it’s easier to explain this way, I’ll go with 5 pieces of cheese. Lay them out in the center of the plate with four cheese squares forming the corner points of a checkerboard and one right in the middle – the same way that “five” appears on a die. Once you’ve done this on all your plates, fill in the four spaces in between the cheese squares with the beet squares. The result should be a three-by-three alternating checkerboard pattern.

Now place your ring mold right in the center of the checkerboard. Give the minced beet mixture a toss and spoon some in the ring mold. You want this to be about two inches high, so say 2/3^rd of the way up if you’re using a tomato paste can. Press gently to pack it down so it retains its shape. Then, take a small handful of the frisee salad and put it at the top of the ring mold, on top of the beets. Holding the ring mold in place with your fingers, remove the ring mold and you’ve got a tower of beets with a frizzy top. Sprinkle a few croutons so that they get caught in the frisee, and serve immediately.