fridge salad

 Maybe you work at a restaurant and it is busier. Maybe your friends are asking you to hang out more. Maybe both are happening at the same time.

Coming out of a long nap you should go into the kitchen and cook something that you can pull from the fridge and eat when you have a little time to yourself. I would suggest to marinate some beets. My old acupuncturist said beets are good for your blood, something that tends leaves your face when you overexert yourself. Maybe kind of funny to be suggesting beets but honestly love and appreciate them for being a workhorse of whatever our Midwestern cuisine is. Plus it’s easier to appreciate cold things when you are hot. I cook them like Alice Waters in a baking dish with a splash of water covered in tin foil at 375 until a knife goes through in the way I feel like eating them. Sometimes that’s more firm and sometimes that’s beet jelly. I find it really hard to cook beets *just right*. Then you wait til they’re cool enough to peel the skins and cut them and dump vinegar on to taste. You can find yourself using a lot of vinegar but my favorite for this dish is very precious to me and I only spare a small glug, it serves more to highlight the sweet-earth rather than to mask it as can be common with this preparation.

The beets are good because of this earthiness, reminding us of what we stand on (even if it’s underneath concrete) and offer a “grounding” feeling for the eater. If you want to sink your feet in even deeper I might suggest to have some blue cheese with the beets. Nicolaus Balla published a recipe for beet and blue cheese salad in the influential Bar Tartine cookbook, including an image where the beets and cheese are separate. Which is how I like it in order to get the full visual impact of both beautiful foods. The beets and cheese tend to bleed on each other which is fine but feels less inspired pulling it out of the fridge on day 2 or 3.

On the way back from the cheese shop I texted Cub that I wanted to the Cab Franc of foods. The kind I like, deep earth with a lick of acidity. Something that reminds me of opening a fresh bag of clay, damp and heavy sure, but full of possibility. Going to take you somewhere. 

Unless you’re really in the clouds I would suggest white wine, a friend of Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc for this. We have a duo in the shop from Le Temps d’Aimer that I’ve been dreaming about since the last time the wines were in Chicago. If you hate blue cheese, you can eat beets and drink Cabernet Franc maybe? I suggest this pair from Bobinet. Pop the Hanami whenever you’d like and save the Echalier for an occasion.

Other fridge salads to consider: beans, tuna, mussels like from our apéro bar, a grain salad like farro