Beets are another great winter vegetable and I don’t seem to have them nearly often enough. A couple of weeks ago I was at a restaurant near work, Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, and they had a lot of great sounding dishes using seasonal ingredients including a golden beet tatin served with salad greens and goat cheese. Given my enjoyment of seasonal ingredients I was pleased to see the dish on the menu and I just had to order it. The beet tatin turned out to be really good, so good in fact that I just had to try to make it at home!
I started off the recipe with the easy part, roasting the golden beets. Next up was trying to figure out what the pinot noir gastrique was from their description in the menu. It turns out that a gastrique is made by caramelizing sugar, adding a vinegar and then reducing to the desired consistency. Along my search I came across a gastrique that caramelized honey instead of sugar and I liked the sound of that. So in the end I had a gastrique made with caramelized honey, red wine vinegar and pinot noir and it sounded really good.
Now that I had a recipe for the contents of the tatin I just needed to cook it. Normally a tatin (a pie with the crust on top) is made in a full pie plate but I decided to make it in ramekins so that they would be in individual serving sizes. The individually sized golden beet tatins in a pinot noir gastrique garnished with goat cheese turned out great! The roasted golden beets were perfectly soft, nice and sweet and they went so well with the savoury gastrique. Of course you really can’t go wrong with the light, flaky, all butter pastry and the tangy goat cheese finished everything off perfectly. I served the beet tatin along with some salad greens and the remaining gastrique made for the perfect dressing.
Golden Beet Tatin with Goat Cheese
ingredients
- 4 small golden beets (washed and trimmed)
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup red wine
- pastry to cover 4 ramekins
- 1/4 cup goat cheese (crumbled)
- 2 cups salad greens
directions
- Wrap the beets in aluminum foil.
- Bake the beets in a preheated 350F/180C oven until soft, about 1 to 1.5 hours.
- Let the beets cool, peel and slice them.
- Caramelize the honey on a pan.
- Add the red wine vinegar and red wine and simmer to reduce to a sauce like consistency.
- Pour 1 tablespoon of the gastrique into each of the 4 ramekins followed by the beet slices and the pastry.
- Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven until the pastry is golden brown.
- Flip the ramekins over onto the plates and let the tatin slide out pastry down.
- Garnish with the goat cheese, salad greens and remaining gastrique.
this looks yummy!!
Wow – this would be a great first course for a dinner party – I'm bookmarking this one!
Wow, this looks totally gorgeous! 🙂 I definitely need to try this out – stunning!
vegetarian! lovely, it's good for my husband. We do love goat cheese as well
Ooh, that looks really good. Too bad my boyfriend would probably not eat that…
I have missed your cooking Kevin and this is really a wonderful way to welcome me back!!! Beautiful color on the beets!!
oh yes this i like! great flavors! love anything with goat cheese!
Beetroot and goat cheese is unbeatable as a combination. Can I use regular beets instead?
I think this sounds absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much for the recipe, I'll be making this soon.
Your cooking gets more and more gourmet and professional every day! I love the presentation of this. Perfect for a dinner party. Or a sitting by myself at home eating dinner party.
I have never heard of golden beets. I'm going forth in search of.
Looks gorgeous and what a great idea to carmelize beets with gastrique!!!
I have found that I'm not a huge beet fan..they always seem to taste a bit earthy. Although your photo makes me want to try them again. How do you get them to not taste so much like dirt? (aka "earthy") Am I using the wrong kinds of beets or something?
another one of your beautiful salads!
I love the idea of this. A sure fire way to get me to eat my salad!
Wow Kevin. You've been up to some amazing cooking lately. This is beautiful.
Laura
That's such a great color you got with the beets! So rich, beautiful pictures.
This sound sooo fabulous. I'm with you. I don't have beet nearly enough. Your photo is stunning.
Trissa: Regular beets would also work well!
Dawn: Sorry, I have never really noticed beets tasting like dirt… I quite enjoy the earthy feel to them but it has never over powered them in my mind.
Kevin, this looks gorgeous. I can almost taste the sweet and sour flavors wrapping around the earthy caramelized beet. Mmmm. Beautiful picture, and delightful idea!!
Beautiful! This would be more dinner party fare than everyday cooking for me, but it would be an impressive appetizer.
I love beets and this sounds like a great combination of flavours.
Beautiful! I love, love beets! – mary