I had a lusty affair with beets while Nat was away for a few weeks in Copenhagen, especially cooked ones, earthy and sweet. Beets are too easily forgotten in our kitchen – which is a shame since they’re both delicious and very nutritious. This tasty, simple salad offsets the beet’s intense earthiness with creamy, bitter tahini, sour lemon and parsley.

• 4 smallish beetroots
• 2 tbsp tahini
• The zest from 1 unwaxed lemon
• The juice from that very same lemon
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• about 2 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped
• 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Wash the beets and place them in a medium sauce pan. Cover the beets with ample cold water. Bring to a simmer a leave it the hell alone for an hour or so. They’re done once a sharp knife can easily poke through the sweet, sweet beetflesh.
2. Zest the lemon and set aside.
3. While the beets are cooking, make the dressing. In a small bowl combine the tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Add enough water to give the dressing a creamy but runny consistency. This depends on your tahini, but it’ll likely be around 2 tablespoons. We use this same dressing for almost every salad we eat.
4. Drain the beets and let them cool. Sure, you can run them under some cold water for a bit or shock them in an ice batch. Trim, peel and quarter the beets. Wash your hands, you look a mess.
5. Place the beets in a big bowl. Add the lemon zest, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix it up. Drizzle on the dressing and garnish with parsley. Don’t mix it after adding the dressing, unless you want hilariously pink dressing.

Beat to Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today.

Describing my ideal pomodoro sauce makes is sound like a complicated affair. It’s not – it’s just a bit of process and finesse. The result is more than worth the additional effort – fresher and more vegetal than it’s gloopy, concentrated cousin.

• About 10 plum or other medium sized tomatoes
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 small bunch of basil, whole
• 1 tsp chile pepper flakes
• salt and pepper to taste
• A pinch of sugar

1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a vigorous boil. While it’s heating up, get an ice bath set up in a large bowl.
2. Once the water is at a boil, plop the tomatoes in for 30-45 seconds until the skins just begin to break. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon, dumping them straight into the ice bath.
3. Peel the tomatoes and then chop them in half. Remove most of the seed pods, but don’t dispose of them.
4. Place the discarded seeds into a sieve. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt to draw out the moisture and place over a bowl.
5. While the seedy bits are draining, put the tomatoes into a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Before they get too hot, crush the tomatoes in your fists like you’re some kind of unforgiving tomato king. Sure, you could use a potato masher, but this way is so much more cathartic. Add a pinch of salt and sugar. Keep the mix simmering.
6. Meanwhile, add the oil, garlic, basil and chile pepper flakes to a cold, large frying pan over a low flame. Watch this carefully – you don’t want this oil infusion to start sizzling. Just before the oil starts popping, turn the heat off and let it sit for 10 minutes or so while tomatoes continue to simmer.
7. Once the tomatoes have broken down, add in the liquid you’ve extracted from the seed pods and simmer for another 10 minutes or so. Taste and season.
8. Decant the oil infusion directly into the tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes or until the sauce is fully emulsified.

One of my favourite meals on the planet is a spaghetti pomodoro made with this sauce. Cook the spaghetti 2 minutes less than directed and then finish the pasta in a pan with the sauce and few splashes of the water you cooked the noodles in. You don’t want the pasta downing in sauce, just well coated.

Reduced to Wild Nothing – Gemini.

Our house salsa is fairly trivial to prepare and fairly amazing to consume. Based loosely on memories of the salsa at Papilote in San Francisco.

• 4-5 small tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 red pepper, trimmed
• 1 red chile pepper
• 3 small cloves of garlic, unpeeled
• 1 medium carrot, cut in half lengthwise
• 2 spring onions, trimmed
• Juice from 1/2 lime

1. Get the broiler going. In the meantime, get your prep on.
2. Arrange all of the veg in a medium baking dish. Just before you pop it under the broiler, give everything a nice coating of vegetable oil.
3. You want everything to have a nice char, especially the tomatoes and peppers. This usually takes about 10 minutes or so to achieve, but keep an eye on the proceedings.
4. Remove the dish from the oven. Trim the top off the chile and remove the garlic from its skin.
5. Pop everything into the food processor and blend until smooth. Add the lime juice and season to taste.

Mix it up with some cilantro, if that’s your thing. Sometimes that’s my thing too. This goodness keeps for few days in the Frigidaire.

Blended to Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo.

Masoor dal (daal, dahl, whatever) is such an altruistic dish. It asks so very little of you, but gives so very much in return. So this variant asks that you have some spices at hand, fine, but even if you made it using only red lentils and broth, you’d still end up with something extremely edible. The prep work is done in mere minutes, the rest of your time is spent waiting patiently for things to thicken up.

There are infinite variants of the mighty masoor dal. This just happens to be the one we made last night. Experiment. It’s very difficult to ruin.

• 1 cup red lentils
• 4 cups light vegetable broth
• 1.5 teaspoons cumin seed
• 1 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1 clove garlic, smashed
• 2 cm piece of ginger, halved
• 1/4 teaspoon of chile powder or to taste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon of fat: oil, ghee, butter, whathaveyou
• salt to taste

1. Rinse the dal with a few charges of cold water and set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over a medium-high flame. When the oil’s nearly smoking add the garlic, cumin and mustard seeds. The cumin seed should pop on impact. Keep this moving for about a minute, careful not to let the cumin seed burn.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and bring it to a simmer.
4. Cook over low heat for about 45 minutes, or until it’s at a consistency you’re more than happy to eat. Stir occasionally. The water tends to separate from the lentils and you could get in a bad way if you’re not mindful.
5. Serve over a nice basmati rice, like Majula’s wonderful zucchini rice.

Dal making music: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem.

For the past few months we’ve been devouring a lot more salads than we usually do. It’s mostly this dressing’s fault. So quick (seconds) and delicious (very). Particularly good when coating strong leaves, like rocket.

• About 1 tablespoon tahini
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon or lime
• Enough water
• 1/2 garlic clove, crushed to smithereens
• Salt, pepper, and herbs to taste

1. Add the tahini and citrus juice to a small bowl. Whisk them together until things get all pasty.
2. Slowly add water about 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing as you go. You want it to pour easily, but not become watery. If things get too damp, add a tiny bit of tahini to the mix. A little tahini goes a long way.
3. Mix in the garlic, seasoning, and herbs to taste.
4. C’est tout!

Dressed with Atlas Sound – Logos.