Detroit Reds

Today, Janet went out to the garden and pulled up a beet for lunch. It weighed over a kilo! We grow a variety called Detroit Red. They seem to be the standard! I have tried some of the older varieties including one called crapaudine here that is long, but I never really had success with them. This is the third year with the Detroit Reds. I leave them in the ground until we need them and they just get bigger and bigger.
I love beets and I love them grated raw. I think root vegetables are very good for you and I love all of them. Janet makes a mustardy vinagrette and voila, that's it. Super simple. This salad was garnished with some orange slices. Beets and citrus are a great combination. In the winter, we have a salad with sliced cold boiled beets, grapefruit slices dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.
Grated beets, carrots and celery root are staple accompaniments with charcuterie here in France. The beets are served as above, carrots with oil and lemon juice, you could sprinkle a little ground cayenne and the celery root is dressed with mayonnaise (not salad dressing) thinned with a little vinegar. I love celery root. I could buy them in New York at the Union Square Farmers Market, but I rarely saw them any where else.
They are little hairy to prepare with all the knobs, but well worth it.
Mustard is one of the most important ingredients in a French kitchen. It is used in sauces, vinagrettes and in a lot of meat recipes.. I spread it on pork chops before I grill them, also, a little more complex, a small chicken can be boned and spread on both sides with mustard, then barbecued or broiled. For the barbecue, I use one of those handled cages I can securely lay the spread out boned chicken so I can turn it easily.
A mustard vinagrette is a tablespoon of mustard, 3 of oil and one of wine vinegar.
Those proportions.......Sometimes you want a thicker vinagrette, for your artichokes or boiled leeks...add more oil and whip it up with a fork...it emulsifies and gets thick!
Of course, the crux of your vinagrette is the mustard. Good Dijon Mustard is really cheap here. We buy huge jars of it. Do not refrigerate it! I get yelled at whenever it is found in the refrigerator.
Of course Frenches yellow mustard is not real mustard, read the label! There are all kinds of other things in there as well as unnatural yellowness!!!! It is pasty and weak and kind of chemical tasting. The same goes for the bizarre American conciete known as Grey Poupon! It does not exist in France! You cannot make a good vinagrette with Grey Poupon! Go to your cupboard and remove it NOW!
What you really want is real Dijon style mustard. It should bring a tear to your eye and make you sneeze! I have seen Roland Brand Dijon all over America and it is pretty good. You don't have to buy the stuff with the fancy label and the medals on it.
Some of the stone ground mustards I have had in the USA are pretty good for a simple vinagrette for a simple lettuce salad.
Well, we didn't eat the entire salad today, it's going to be around for lunch tomorrow. Tonight, we had a zuchinni tart, one of my favorite things. That's a very good thing, because there is a lot of zuchinni in the garden!
Bon apetit!