Beetloaf
Happy Halloween. Here are some sweet recipes for your recipe pumpkin.
Beets are one of my favourite vegetables, but I always just boil, peel, slice and serve with butter and a few sweet spices. Kind of boring, and it is not a meal unto itself. I was going to attempt borscht, but the recipes generally call for cooking and then shredding the vegetables; I rarely have patience for such process.
I'm a crock pot sorta guy.
So today I improvised this slow cooker recipe for me and Danny. The resulting texture and appearance was a bit odd, too crumbly for meatloaf but not really a stew. Avoid adding more liquid, because the roasted flavour is nice. Next time I might try adding a little tapioca flour to thicken the gravy in the bottom. But if it tastes this good, I don't care if the gravy is runny. I served it with Lundberg Wild Blend rice.
Beetloaf
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon ginger purée
- ½ cup apricot conserve (recipe below-or substitute any preserve containing citrus-marmalade would be excellent)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- salt and black pepper to taste
- ½ cup water
- about 1½ pound beets, peeled and cut into ¼-inch cubes
- 1 generous pound of ground pork
- 1 leek, sliced
- 2 cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
Combine first six ingredients in a small bowl. Place beets, pork, leek, cloves and cinnamon in a slow cooker and stir to combine. Pour ginger mixture overtop. Set on low and cook for 10 hours or until the edges begin to brown.
I wouldn't hesitate to try adding a dried chili or two to add a little zip, but there's plenty of flavour without.
I can be terribly absent-minded about seasonal things like fruit and wildflowers, which ironically are one of my chief pleasures in life. One wonderful thing about living across the street from the farmers' market is I don't forget about the seasonal fruit. This year a cool late summer made a long season for Ontario peaches, and I enjoyed them almost every day (with breakfast granola and yogurt) from early August to mid September.
Mom and I used to make a peach or apricot conserve (I can't remember which) that contained pineapple, maraschino cherries and almonds, but the recipe is lost. This is adapted from one I found online. It sat here by my keyboard for weeks as I intended to post it, but apparently never did until now. It's delicious on vanilla ice cream or robustly flavoured toast such as rye.
Apricot conserve
- 2 oranges
- 1 lemon
- 1 quart apricots
- 1 540-ml (19-oz) can crushed pineapple
- ½ cup maraschino cherries, quartered
- 4 cups sugar
- ½ cup slivered almonds
Sterilize jars for at least 4½ pints.
Slice the oranges and lemon whole, discard seeds and cut into chunks.
Drop apricots one at a time into boiling water for 10 seconds. Remove promptly. The skin will peel off easily. Discard skin and cut fruit into quarters.
Drain pineapple, reserving the juice.
Mix juice with sugar and bring to a boil. Pour syrup over fruit and boil for 25 minutes. Keep the heat just as high as necessary and avoid stirring too much. You may add a small piece of butter to eliminate foam.
Add almonds and boil one more minute.
Remove from heat. Stir gently for five minutes, skimming foam if necessary. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.