Earlier this year we were in New York to launch Green Kitchen at Home. We had a blast doing a live cooking session at Food52, teaching a cooking class and had a book signing in a tiny but packed little store in Greenwich Village. But what I really wanted to talk about today was our night off. When we tucked baby Noah (formerly known as Gabriel) to sleep in his stroller and headed to ABCV for dinner. Side note: You should know that for being a food writing couple, Luise and I very rarely go out and eat at proper restaurants. With kids, it’s just easier to do takeaway or pick places where it’s okay that they climb, run and crash. Also, fancy restaurants make me feel awkward. But we had an epic evening at ABCV. We tried the tasting menu of which I can’t even remember half of the dishes. But I know that there were simple crudités with lots of spreads, some kind of soft beet carpaccio/tartare with a little bit of sting to it, a whole roasted cauliflower with turmeric tahini dressing(!), avocado lettuce cups, roasted shiitake and a couple of desserts. And what made the evening even better was that Noah slept through almost the entire dinner (thank you jetlag!).
We have been talking about that beet carpaccio (and the cauliflower with tahini turmeric dressing) a few times since we got back. And when Luise recently spotted a recipe for roasted beets and sesame labneh in the latest issue of Jamie Magazine, we started talking about it again. Looking through our recipe archive, it is pretty obvious that we’ve got a love for beets. They are sweet and mildly earthy, have an awesome color, can grow in our harsh Swedish climate and are cheap! What’s not to love?
So a couple of days ago, we picked up a few bunches of beets, started cooking and here we are. With some kind of beetroot tartare (mixed minced beets), dollops of sesame labneh and a few suggestions on what can be used to scoop it into your mouth, apart from crackers. And as a last minute contribution, we are also offering a less fancy way of serving this, inside a rye waffle toast (yup, you might want to scroll down to it right away).
This recipe is great as a starter, at a buffet table or a party. It’s pretty and impressive, creamy and delicious with plenty of flavor from fresh dill and mint and a little sting from horseradish. Since we love yogurt just as much as we love beetroots, we invited labneh (yogurt’s fancy cousin) to the party. We totally stole the idea to mix tahini into labneh from that Jamie Mag article. You should too.
You need at least two hours to let the yogurt drain into labneh cheese but I’m still going to claim that this is an easy recipe – only a few ingredients and apart from draining the yogurt, it’s all pretty quick. I imagine that a quick cheat version could be accomplished by simply using thick yogurt without draining it and buying pre-cooked beetroots. I can’t promise that it will be as good, but it’ll at least be quick and effortless.
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