Feeding Friendship: Beets

Well, friends I'm not gonna lie. I was not excited about the choice of beets as our ingredient. In fact, I had never knowingly consumed a beet in my life until now. I hear they taste "earthy" and I know where some dirt is if I get the hankering...but no matter. The blog must go on.

I turned, as I am wont to do in times of culinary stress, to my friend pasta. After scouting many beet-related options online, I settled on Mario Batali's Roasted Beet Pasta recipe. Once upon a time I registered for, and received, a pasta machine for our wedding, but had sadly not unwrapped it, so I decided that it was time.

You can find the recipe online here. It required very little other than the said beets, flour (lots and lots of flour), and eggs. I chose to make a half recipe since I wasn't sure beet pasta was appetizing enough for me to want to make an entire pound of it.

Warning: This is a rather time-consuming process. You may want to roast the beets one night and make the pasta the next if you decide to attempt this.

I started out by washing the beets, trimming off the irrelevant portions, placing them on a foil-lined baking dish with a little olive oil & fancy salt and roasting them for a little under an hour. Your cooking time may vary, so check them with a fork.

Waiting to be roasted

Roasted beets

The next step (after letting them cool) is to peel the beets. This was more difficult than I imagined due to the very nature and texture of the beets. Once you put them under running water to help peel them, as Mario suggests, I found it very difficult to tell which parts of the beet had been peeled and which hadn't. Oy. If I did this again, I might try peeling them before roasting. Once you're done peeling, dice the beets up, but you don't have to be too particular- they're getting pureed anyway. 

diced beets...smells like dirt

I used a blender instead of my food processor with somewhat poor results- I had to keep scraping the sides or the blades wouldn't touch the beets, so I would definitely recommend the processor over a blender in this case.

beet puree...smells like wet dirt

Now you're ready to start your pasta! Batali's directions are spot on here. I actually attended a cooking course in Italy a few years back, and this is the way they made their dough, so I can vouch for its effectiveness and authenticity. You put your flour in the shape of a ring or a volcano with a crater in the middle. Then you put your wet ingredients in the center and slowly stir to combine more and more of the flour. 

one and a "half" large eggs- the half is egg beaters

eggs & beet puree

I used a fork at first because the eggs were so wet to start with. I was also recommend adding a couple grinds or a pinch of salt to the beets at this stage. I think it would improve the flavor of the pasta later. 

Pre-pasta: pretty in pink

So once you've got a good amount of flour mixed in and your dough becomes something resembling a smooshy solid, it's time to start mixing with your hands. With beet pasta, this resulted in some incredibly purple hands and a difficult time taking photos without covering the camera in purple flour. Keep kneading until it becomes a dough and follow Mario's directions. 

here's my finished dough wrapped in plastic and ready to rest

At this point, I had spent nearly 2 hours (including roasting time) the first night and I threw in the towel. I put the wrapped dough in a plastic bag and refrigerated it overnight. Is this a good plan? I have no idea, but my dough seemed no worse for the wear, though (improbably) it became even more purple overnight. I let it come to room temperature for at least 45 minutes before proceeding. 

that's some purple dough

Here's where Mario gets vague. He just says to "roll out" your pasta and you're pretty much done. Thanks for nothing, big guy. A combination of my cooking class and the directions for the pasta machine enables me to tell you to flour the dough heavily and run it through your pasta machine on the largest setting several times, folding the dough in two and flouring between each pass. Turn the setting increasingly smaller and keep flouring and passing the dough through. With this beet dough I could tell almost immediately that it wasn't as durable as regular pasta dough, so I only went down 1 notch on my machine before I started having holes. 

feeding the floured dough

not a fruit rollup

sticky purple dough

I decided I had better just leave it pretty thick and run it through the fettuccine attachment as it stood. This went fairly well, though I would recommend flouring the noodles and separating them immediately so they don't stick together when you're done. 

Wee! Noodles! 

Purple noodle mess

After I had my two batches cut and separated, I boiled some water and cooked the noodles for a couple of minutes in the boiling water, until they became buoyant and were cooked through. I then drained them and added sauce. 

Purple pasta!

Now, if I were a Top Chef contestant doing some sort of beet challenge, I would have made some sort of simple butter or cream sauce to "showcase" the beet flavor. I am not that brave, so I hid it under some pomodoro sauce. I think this was for the best. All that labor basically created ugly, purple homemade noodles that were fine, but had a slight aftertaste of, well, dirt. Some people dig it, apparently, (hey-o!) but I'm not going to be joining the Shroot family on the beet farm anytime soon. Would I do this process again with spinach? Yes. With beets? No. 

  

mmm...?