Glazed Over

I realised a few days ago that with all this focus on healthy eating here at Struan Farm I miss baking and my gourmet cooking experiments. I'm also well and truly into an early winter funk. There are only so many walnuts I can shell, and so many hours I can sit needlepointing, before my eyes start to glaze over. I don't do sedentary well. Hard to believe, but I can get grumpy. Me.

Yes, I've been baking bread, muesli and chocolate chip cookies for recent farmstay guests, but otherwise we've been eating, and I've been cooking, simply. Meat/fish/poultry and vegetables or salads. I'm missing testing out new recipes. The creative part of me demands expression, somehow, pretty much all the time, and it's been calling out. 

Recently I watched Annabel Langbein's Free Range Cook television show on FoodTV. I'm sorry Annabel, I love your recipes but I can only handle so much gushing. However I was intrigued by your mention of a salad made with finely sliced raw beets/beetroot, finely sliced fennel, walnuts, and crumbled goat cheese, drizzled with good extra virgin olive oil and balsamic glaze. You can find the recipe here. After a rainy afternoon I decided to venture outside to dig up the last of the beets/beetroots and teach myself to make balsamic glaze. It wasn't much of a challenge, but it is good and finished the salad. Let's just say that making the glaze helped get me out of my bored, grumpy funk, however briefly. 

Two cups of balsamic vinegar are brought to the boil with 1/2 cup brown sugar, then simmered until reduced by half. About 20 minutes. It can be put in a jar and saved for future use. If you have any questions you can check out the recipe here.  Assembly is quick and easy, I sliced the beets and fennel using my mandolin, tossed on the walnuts, crumbled cheese (used low fat feta) and drizzled glaze and oil... Voila!

 

John wasn't terribly excited by the prospect of eating raw beets/beetroot, but the crumbled cheese won him over. 

Comments

[Jen Yates]

I can't say raw beets excites me either! but glad it got you out of the funk!
:)