Monday night supper: roast lamb, potato gratin & green lentils

On Sunday afternoon I drove up from London to my father’s house in Northamptonshire so that I could then drive him to Heathrow to catch a flight to Nepal. (He’s off for two weeks on a whistle stop tour around Nepal, Kolkata and Mumbai to visit schools funded by Mondo Challenge, a charity of which he is about to become chairman).

As we pulled up at Terminal Four my sister rang from Oxford where she was staying with her best friend, sounding tired & definitely not looking forward to the bus journey back to London. I had a rare brainwave and on the way home diverted via Beck’s to abduct lil’sis & Posetta Baddog to take them back to my mother’s for a few days R&R. Lil’sis isn’t too well at the moment & PB is starting to look like a barrel from the lack of walks.

We are a family that likes to eat and last night we cooked supper together. A leg of lamb from the butcher’s van, lentils and a potato gratin. It couldn’t have been simpler.

The gratin is a great dish for impressing people, yet costs around 60p/$1 for enough to feed at least four people. A small 1lb bag of Charlotte potatoes, still in their skins,& half a red onion were sliced on a mandolin in a matter of minutes and then strewn in a buttered ovenproof dish. I poured over enough stock to cover the vegetables and popped them in the oven for 40 minutes.

They came out soft & unctuous, with a sauce thickened by the starch from the potatoes. It's important to use a waxy, salad potato in this dish as, in such thin slices, a floury potato would dissolve into the stock.



If you are making stock from concentrate, use a little less than normal for, as the stock reduces in the oven, it will become a lot saltier. For that reason, do not add any extra salt to the potatoes.



The lentils were even easier. To one small red onion sweated in a little olive oil, I added two cups of small green lentils and two bay leaves, which were then covered in vegetable stock and cooked for about 30 minutes.

So healthy and delicious.

Leek & potato soup

There is nothing, nothing so comforting as a bowl of soup when the weather starts to change. Last weekend whilst I was dog-sitting the Bassets, it was grey & raining outside and I wanted something warm for supper.

So I made fridge soup - what goes in the pot is what is discovered lurking in the vegetable drawer. I found a leek and three quarters of an onion, so with three medium potatoes from the larder, I made my own version of leek & potato soup.

First chop up the vegetables: (ignore browning potatoes, I cldn't find my camera for a bit)



Heat some olive oil, & throw onions & leeks into heavy pot over very low heat and put on lid.



When they have softened cover with water/stock to two inches over. Add chopped potatoes.



Turn up heat so liquid simmers and cook for around 20-15 minutes until potatoes are completely soft.



Whizz it all together with immersion blender for speed or, if like me you like smooth soup with some chunks, take out a large ladleful of potato first, adding back once you've whizzed the rest. Equally you can pass through a sieve, use a mouli-legumes or shove it all in the Magimix.



And ta da! Super quick & easy leek & vegetable soup. I added a blob of sour cream to mine.

Starbucks Via Instant Coffee

I work from home and loathe milky coffee, so grabbing a Starbucks isn’t a priority in my life. Occasionally I pick up a black venti red eye between external meetings if I am flagging or sleep deprived, but that’s it. I'm more interested in the coffee I drink at home.

Because I drink my coffee black, without any artificial sugars or syrups or any of that weird shit, how it tastes straight is of paramount importance to me. I want a strong, bitter taste with a round finish that doesn't taste burnt or caramel-y.

As you may have gathered I’m English, so instant, as we call it, is ubiquitous back home. I’m not going to pretend it’s better than freshly brewed coffee, but Nescafé's Black Gold, Cap Colombie & Alta Rica, or Carte Noire are more than adequate as backup everyday drinks when you can't be bothered to brew a pot for one person, certainly better than most filter/drip coffees you buy from stands or corner stores – and they are strong, with absolutely no relation to the insipid instant coffee you can buy in American supermarkets.

The only reason why I don't bother with instant here in the US is because of the dearth of good instant on the American market, & I am presuming that that is why Starbucks are pushing their new instant coffee, Via, right now.

But Christ it’s expensive: $2.95 for three servings!

The most expensive UK instant coffee I could find on Ocado.com was Nescafé Black Gold at £3.55 per 100g grams. A serving is considered to be 1.8gms. That makes a serving cost of 6p or 9c give or take.

How HOW can Starbucks justify $1 a serving?! It's not as though Starbucks coffee is *that* delicious in the first place.

And, here’s the kicker: Via is absolutely disgusting. I was given a sample at a Starbucks store yesterday: it tastes acrid & charred with no roundness. Possibly the most disgusting coffee, instant, or fresh brewed, I have ever tasted: I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the little sampler cup. Yuck.

Good luck with that Starbucks.

Birthday raclette

Two weeks ago today Y managed a double whammy birthday present for GG: a Raclette machine was bought, wrapped and given to GG. Once unwrapped, it was promptly plugged in and we revealed the bowls and plates of Raclette cheese, peppers, prosciutto, boiled potatoes, onions & gherkins.

Along with a rather good bottle of white Burgundy (to follow the bottle of Taittinger we had already consumed). Fortunately, the drinking of water with Raclette cheese is much frowned upon as it is said to interfere with the digestion of the cheese. The Swiss really are very clever.





So I start with one abstemious potato:



Then the melted dish of Raclette is removed from under the hotplate and the cheese is slid over the poor, lonely potato:



But wait! There's one final step:



Paprika sprinkled, one can start shoving melted cheese & potato down one's gullet as quickly as possible. Just in time for the next dish of melted cheese to appear to accompany the next potato. And so on.

I wish I could say that I had stopped eating after I'd finished smearing umpteen little dishes of melted Raclette cheese all over my face. But no. There was more:



Y made a ganache & caramel layer cake of such richness and badness and 65% chocolate that I could only manage a slice. But goodness what a slice it was:



I need to take up running. Or something.

Karma is a bitch, or why I won't be buying Billy's Bakery cupcakes again

I visited seven, yup, seven cupcake bakeries in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon for a story I am researching. The taste results will appear elsewhere, but I wanted to have a little rant about service.

First: the good. Buttercup Bake Shop gave me a warm welcome and, when my two cupcakes arrived at the cashier in a paper bag, I asked for them to be boxed, explaining that I was going to be travelling on a train with them. Not only did the really lovely guy box them without a second's hesitation, but he scrunched up protective tissue paper around them. (See above.) My cupcakes were in perfect condition on arrival five hours later. Ten out of ten.

Now: the execrable. There was quite a line at Billy's Bakery in Chelsea, so I made sure I knew exactly what I wanted by the time my turn came around. Unfortunately dude behind the counter found "one Red Velvet & one Vanilla" too complicated to comprehend" & gave me the, "What are you RETARDED?" sneer when he asked me to repeat myself. Lovely.

Flustered by the attitude I forgot to ask for a box. When I did so at the cashier, explaining that I was travelling, he refused and with zero, well less than zero charm. His charming co-worker manning the till tried to make up for it by proffering a plastic bag. I figured that a review should be based on what the store was willing to give so I took the paper bag of cupcakes and left, thankfully. This is what they looked like five hours later:



Seriously, one box wasn't going to kill them - the other five NYC bakeries I visited all boxed my cupcakes WITHOUT BEING ASKED. Because, hey, they have icing: they're gonna get squashed.

Here's a tip, dude with the 'tude: karma is a bitch. You were unpleasant & unhelpful and now, instead of a lovely picture of a perfect cupcake, you've got a splatted mess with your bakery's name on for all of Google to see.

Halloween candy: gummy earthworms

Whilst researching a Halloween story, I came across these today. Possibly the best trick or treat candy I've seen this year. I can certainly think of plenty of infants of my acquaintance who would relish these worms.

$15 for a box of 100 (plus P&P) from Candywarehouse.com

The Original Leon Superfood Salad from the Leon cookbook

Leon is probably the best place in London to find a healthy, inexpensive and outrageously scrumptious lunch that can be eaten on the hoof, in a nearby park or at your desk. For three months, whilst I was fashion editing on a magazine based near Leon's original Carnaby Street outlet, I ate the Original Superfood Salad at least three times a week. It's that good.

One of only two dishes to have been on the restaurant's menu since the beginning, it is packed full of nutritious deliciousness. Although it tastes green & summery, it feels especially good in the autumn and winter for warding off the lurgies.

Before the restaurant published its first cookbook, I messed about at home with approximations to it, but I always seemed to overcook the broccoli, forget an ingredient or two and I hadn't got the dressing proportions correct.

So, imagine my glee when chef Allegra McEvedy, one of the founders, put together the official Leon cookbook, sensibly dividing it into a front half dealing with the importance of ingredients, and the back half packed with wonderful, simple Leon & Leon-inspired recipes.

The Original Leon Superfood Salad (Serves two)

2 tbsp quinoa
Salt and pepper
2-3 broccoli spears, cut into bite-sized florets, stalks sliced
120g frozen peas
Quarter cucumber, peeled,cut into slim batons
100g good-quality feta cheese, crumbled
1 handful of alfalfa sprouts
2 tbsp toasted seeds such as pumpkin, sesame and sunflower
½ avocado, cut into pieces
1 small handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 small handful of mint, chopped
2 dsp lemon juice
4 dsp extra-virgin olive oil

Put the quinoa into a small pan. Cover with cold water to a couple of centimetres/one inch above the grain and let it gently simmer over a low heat until the water has evaporated — this takes about 15 minutes — then cool to room temperature.

Pour a couple of cms/one inch of hot water into another saucepan, add a pinch of salt. Bring it to the boil, drop in the broccoli & peas, cover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain and run under cold water to take all the heat out and keep the broccoli good and green.

Now build your salad in layers: broccoli, peas, cucumber, feta, alfalfa sprouts, seeds, avocado, quinoa and finally the herbs. Only dress it with the lemon juice, oil and seasoning just before you eat it.

I would add here that I don’t usually weigh out any of the ingredients for this salad, being a) too lazy and b) preferring not to have chunks of excess avocado going brown in the fridge. Although I have made it correctly so I know how it’s supposed to look & taste, for me the beauty of it is that so long as you keep the ingredients the same, the proportions of the individual quantities don’t seem to matter so much. Oh & I just toss it all together.



This is the bowlful of goodness I made for JK’s and my lunch today. I used an entire avocado as I knew I'd never get round to using the other half. Likewise, the cucumber: I had a small American ridge cucumber (about half the size of a European hothouse one), and peeled, de-seeded* and baton-ed it all. As we had missed breakfast, I doubled the quinoa content. Oh and I halved the dressing as we had run out of olive oil.

*the seeds are much bigger and quite bitter compared to UK cucumbers

Click here to buy Leon: Ingredients and Recipes

Animal egg cups by Quail from Liberty of London

Comforts of home: I am obsessed with boiled eggs at the moment. Bashed on the top, eaten with a teaspoon from an egg cup, with very buttery Marmite soldiers on standby for dipping purposes.

And I'd really, really like to eat my egg out of one of these glorious egg cups by Quail from Liberty of London.

Click to take you through to each:
Badger, Otter, Guinea Pig, Scottie, Swan, Duck
All £10.95

Purple asparagus

I spent a very pleasurable forty minutes in the food porn heaven that is Delicious Orchards this morning, prodding produce, concocting fantasy supper menus and throwing veg into my basket.

When I got home and unpacked my spoils it became obvious that I had bought many wonderful things but little that comprised an actual meal.

But when faced with purple asparagus, which I have never seen before, at just $2.99lb I was powerless to resist.



Likewise I also seem to have five different varieties of local & heirloom apples, Jersey sweetcorn, four types of brassicas, alfalfa, four types of chillies, and some local mushrooms. And a whole lot more besides.

I'm considering just steaming the corn and asparagus, melting a bucket of butter and having a dripping chin evening. (I'm home alone dogsitting for a few days.) Screw the regime minceur.

Autumn Pumpkin action in New Jersey

It would appear from the Pick Your Own Pumpkins signs every couple of miles or so along the highway, that October in New Jersey would not be complete without wandering into a field, tripping over the vines and hauling off several testaments to the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Note that I used the plural. Because there's just no way that the NJ pumpkin glut could be cleared by each household just buying one pumpkin for its doorstep. No, around here you need clusters of the bloody things. Maybe a couple by the mailbox, along with a few smaller ones along the path to the front door, several on the doorstep itself and obviously a couple of handfuls of baby ones for table decorations.

And that's before we've even ventured into the world of pumpkin pie (truly one of the most revolting things I have eaten recently - imagine a slimey gloop tasting of nothing but allspice), pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cupcakes - for the love of all that is holy, what is wrong with chocolate?, pumpkin bread or pumpkin cheesecake.

I mean I get roasted pumpkin, pumpkin soup or even pumpkin risotto, but this mania for adding pumpkin puree to sweet food leaves me cold. Guess it's a cultural thing.

I shall leave you with some gen-u-wine New Jersey pumpkins, doing what they do best.
Being beautifully decorative.



Pictures taken by me at Delicious Orchards, Colts Neck, NJ

It's Greek to me: Saganaki or how to put on a pound in one meal

In the late 1970s my parents took lil'sis & myself everywhere as infants. Babysitters were expensive & we were good sleepers, so we would be popped upstairs fast asleep at dinner parties and posted under the table at restaurants, snug in a carrycot. They like to tell me that at six months I made my first visit to Milou's Kebab House, amongst a plethora of Greek restaurants on Charlotte Street in London's West End.

Although we moved to Kent when I was three, we still ate at Milou's on our frequent day trips to London, and grew up adoring Greek Cypriot food: taramasalata, grilled pitta bread, juicy pork kebabs were our favourites. Xanis & Yanis, Milou's sons, knew us all by name and I can remember every detail of the restaurant. I ate my first persimmon there and discovered that I didn't like bahklava.

Then one day we arrived for Sunday lunch and the restaurant was shut down. We moved across the road to the great Venus Kebab House, but things were never quite the same again. Since lil'sis & I settled in North London, Lemonia in Primrose Hill has become our go-to Greek Cypriot place and I miss eating there.

After our beach outing on Sunday, we looked for a place to eat that wouldn't mind us trailing two damp, sandy, floppy eared hounds behind us.


(Gratutious wet dog picture)

We settled on a sidewalk table at It's Greek to Me, & I crossed my fingers that it would live up to my expectations.

It may look like a doner/gyro joint, but thank goodness It's Greek to Me is more than the sum of its parts. The menu doesn't just pander to populist tastes, and there is a very good spanakopita (a spinach, feta & filo pastry parcel), and a dish I hadn't eaten before: saganaki, a shallow dish of baked cheese.



Whilst Halloumi, or squeaky cheese, is a fixture on English Greek-Cypriot restaurant menus (& in my fridge), Kefalograviera was new to me. Wiki tells me that Kefalograviera is a traditional DOC Greek ewe’s milk hard cheese from Western Macedonia, Epirus, Etoloakarnania and Evritania, and is the traditional cheese for saganaki.

Utterly delicious, salty, chewy, crispy around the edges, it's great eaten with grilled pitta.

The culinary equivalent of spreading lard on your thighs.

It's Greek to Me, Pier Village, 44 Centennial Drive, Long Branch, NJ 07740
(There are 7 branches in NJ,)

New Jersey fruit & vegetables at Delicious Orchards

New Jersey, Asian Bride & Japanese eggplants

In England eggplants are known as aubergines and only come in one colour: dark shiny purple (apart from the tiny Thai ones), and we never really understood why they were called eggplants. Revelation: until Saturday, I had never seen a white eggplant.


Italian, Pink Rain, White eggplants

Delicious Orchards on Route 34 is one of NJ's most widely known country grocery stores. A family run operation, with a retail business founded in 1950, it's developed into a vast barn with huge heaping piles of fruit & vegetables, most of them local and seasonal. They don't ever have just one type of anything: I counted seven types of eggplant (New Jersey is the largest producing state), fifteen types of chilies, eight types of mushroom and so on.


Three types of zucchini/courgettes/summer squash


Cherry Hot peppers, dried chipotles, fresh jalpenos, chile d'arbol peppers, dried habenero, Ancho (dried Poblano) peppers, New Jersey long peppers, dried Anaheim peppers


Lima beans, baby artichokes, globe artichokes


Lady, Empire, Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious, Macintosh apples all from New Jersey

It's food porn heaven. There's also a nice line in bowls of free snackage strategically positioned throughout the store, so a gentle stroll through the wide aisles can be enjoyed whilst munching on shards of home made chocolate chip cookie, bits of local cucumber dunked in house made ranch dressing, and tortilla chips with corn & black bean salsa.

If the pleasure of dribbling freebie salsa down one's front pales, it is also possible to eat a proper meal outside in the covered café area, which sells, amongst other stuff, cups of extremely good soup (the minestrone tastes like mama used to make it), real cheeseburgers and apple fritters.

God I love this place.

Courgette (zucchini) soup with mozzarella & oregano

Y made this delicious courgette/zucchini soup for dinner a few weeks ago from a recipe he had torn out of an Italian food magazine. It's perfect for late summer/early fall when there is still a glut of summer squashes. It's creamy, fresh, takes about 20 minutes and feels way more sophisticated to eat than the the recipe suggests. Of course GG & Y's lovely table settings help.

It's incredibly simple, barely requiring even a recipe. Serves four.
You'll need: courgettes, medium onion, garlic, stock, milk or cream, oregano, mozzarella (optional)

Prepare a pint of hot vegetable or chicken stock. Slice four or five medium courgettes. Dice a small onion & chop a clove of garlic.
Sweat the onion & garlic in a tablespoonful of olive oil in a medium saucepan over a low-medium heat till golden & translucent. Turn the heat down if they start to brown.
Add the courgettes & a tablespoon chopped oregano. Gently fry until soft, but not browned. Add the hot stock & simmer for ten minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat, dump contents into a blender or food processor.
Blend 'till smooth.
Add 1/2 cup or 4 fl oz of cream or milk. Blend again.
Add more stock or milk a splash at a time until you reach a consistency you like for the soup: some people like it thicker, others very light.
Season with black pepper & sea salt to taste.

Ladle soup into four warmed bowls. Chop up a small ball of mozzarella and divide between the bowls. Garnish with oregano.

Meringues with cream

I have a hangover today, and all I can think about eating are these meringues I made the other week. I used this recipe, but instead of bashing them up as I did for Eton Mess, I just left them in the oven overnight to dry out a little more, and kept them whole.

With way too much whipped heavy (double) cream flopped on top, chopped walnuts on one, & raspberries on the other, plus some sifted icing sugar they were summer incarnate.

Saturday breakfast: American style

Well, American with a touch of European, as our household is French (Y), American (GG) & English (me). And Estonian too, if you count Max the senior Basset Hound, which I think we certainly should do. He is actually present in the picture, sitting with the baby Basset Hound at my feet hoping for dropped waffle morsels. Which is highly likely, as I am incapable of eating without spilling something. Pas stupide these hounds.

The cupcakes in the background are from Brownie Points Bakery at Short Hills. A FAIL, I am afraid, with a tasteless crumb, and oddly synthetic tasting frosting.

Please notice the beautiful blue mug by people will always needs plates, to remind me of home: it depicts the glorious Isokon building in Hampstead in London, just around the corner from my (rented out) flat.

Aga toast

I grew up in an old English weatherboarded house in the country that had an Aga, a very particular kind of huge British double oven & stove range, which also heated all our hot water. It was useful in lots of ways. Made of cast iron, it radiated heat throughout the downstairs during the winter, and was hot enough to dry wet outer things, and defrost dishes of food on the back behind the hotplates.

There was a metal bar for tea towels along its length that was the perfect height for doing ballet exercises. The bottom oven was a warm chamber for cooking slow dishes over night, drying out meringues, and warming up sock lambs that had been abandoned in cold fields by their mothers overnight (We didn't do this, obviously, but it was common practice.)

The Aga top oven makes perfect bread, brilliant pizza and well, anything my mother brought put of it was glorious.

But most of all I loved the two circular always-on hotplates, which were covered by heavy pull-up domes which kept the heat in and little fingers out. If you wanted to boil water, you needed to use a special Aga kettle, and they were also particularly brilliant for making toast in special wire racks that left criss cross marks on the bread. There's a lovely scorchy taste, but the inside stays moist. An Aga really does make perfect toast. It's the taste of my childhood.

Last week I went to Rose's funeral in Leicestershire. She was the only person I knew who still had a proper kitchen range, and at the wonderful house parties at Home Farm, hosted by her and by her children Nick & Suze, we used to make piles of buttery toast in the morning, which was usually eaten with marmalade as we attempted to battle hangovers from long evenings drinking port around the silver laden mahogany dining table.

At her new house she had had an Aga installed, and the morning after the funeral I made buttery toast for everyone as we gathered in fits & starts in the new kitchen for breakfast. And silently thought of her.

Heinz Baked Beans: English style

There aren't that many foods I miss over here in America. I'm certainly not one of those Englishwomen abroad who spends her days dreaming of playing supermarket sweep in the sausage section of Myers of Keswick on Greenwich Street before sipping cups of cruelly over priced Earl Grey in Tea & Sympathy, (surrounded by curious Americans) and moving onto (a portion of) fish & chips (vinegar, wrapped) at A Salt & Battery just up the block.

But Heinz Baked Beans get me every time. I've ranted about it before but I really do object to paying several dollars for imported cans of them over here. (American Heinz Baked Beans are a very different beast: more molasses, very sweet, very odd to an English palate.) Which is why I eat a lot of them when I go back to England. Babysitting for C the other weekend, she realised there was no supper for me.

Not a problem, I replied, lead me to the larder.

And, sure enough, as in all proper English homes, was a supply of the red gold. Even more impressive were the new microwave portions: I know they aren't very environmentally friendly but for a one person supper, they are super convenient.



I cooked them for twice as long as recommended, so they went super-sludgey, then toasted thick white sliced bread, which was then slathered with an inch of Kerrygold. Boarding school days means I also like beans on bread as opposed to toast. Why choose? I muttered.



Heaven. Especially considering American white sliced is DISGUSTING. Instead of the floppy fresh stuff we get in Britain, it's hard, almost stale in both feel & taste. And as for the butter...it just doesn't taste very buttery. I am reduced to buying Kerrygold for $4.99 a packet and eeking it out.

Kalendar, London N6: Vegetarian English Fried Breakfast

Is there anything as beautiful on the plate on a Sunday morning as a traditional English breakfast? This is the vegetarian version, as I am trying to be a little bit healthy, with poached eggs and a vege sausage, substituting for piggy bits & fried eggs.

I am quite aware that the term 'healthy English Breakfast' is an oxymoron, so I attempted to redress the balance with a basket of buttered granary toast and the bowl of excellent fat chips.

This particular breakfast was courtesy of Kalendar on Swains Lane, just by Parliament Hill in North London. C & I repaired there at lunchtime on Sunday to await the arrival of the tiny terrorists & their father, after our wonderful (infant-free) morning swim at the Highgate Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath.

Sitting outside in the 27C sunshine, but protected from the direct heat by an awning, we ordered the large meze plate to get us through the wait, which featured upfront skewered slabs of marinated & grilled halloumi which elevated it from plain old squeaky cheese to salty, chewy heaven, and great puddles of smoky aubergine dip, houmus, & tzatziki, accompanied by skewers of grilled chicken, fat queen olives & brilliant tabouleh with each ingredient coming to the fore rather than the overdressed mush so common in London.

Because we have great big saucer eyes even bigger than our stomachs, P & I plumped for trad breakfasts, mine as above, P with porky products, whilst C had a textbook halloumi wrap and the infants shared a deep bowl of perfectly al dente penne with peas & home made pesto.

Altho, if truth be told, O-Monster homed in on my frankly ambrosial chips which I handed to him one at a time, coated in lashings of ketchup, in obvious preference to his delicious & nutritious lunch.

Kalendar is the kind of neighbourhood restaurant you wish existed in every part of London. With meat from Elite Meats just down the parade, cakes from Konditor & Cook & cheeses from Neal's Yard, along with free range eggs & organic bread, you'd expect the prices to be higher - but my vege breakfast was just £6.95.

Kalendar, 15A Swains Lane, Highgate, N6 6QX

Photo: by me, me, me

Peach, mint & buffalo mozzarella salad

My father prepared & cooked supper for lil'sis & I last week. This was the starter:



With just a drizzle of olive oil, some aged Balsamic and a grind of black pepper, this is summer on a plate.

More indulgent vegetable posting: Organic beets

GG & I are both very fond of beetroot/beets/betterave*. I particularly enjoyed writing that sentence as, until about a year ago, I loathed them. Scarred by school dinners and the vinegar soaked horrors that would be slapped down on our plates, purple juice running into the potato salad & tasting of earth, I had no idea that there could be another way.

And then, for politeness, I manfully swallowed a beet & goats cheese salad at a supper party. And loved it. So, when I saw organic beets at the Red Bank farmers market last weekend, I homed in.



Grown just five miles away, I bought this organic beet for a princely $1.12.



It was crusted in earth and was a bugger to scrub, but the result was worth it.



Not least because it was so beautiful inside.



*delete as applicable