Beet Amuse Bushe with Tomatoes Provencal

So we've been getting weekly veggies from our local CSA and lately have been getting lots and lots of beets. Beets are one of those plants that are available year round here in Santa Cruz, so I'm afraid that we are going to be getting beets every week from now on...ugh! It's not that I don't like beets, they're just something that showed up on holidays at my grandparents house once or twice a year. We'd eat them, and like them, but not see them again until the year after. Now I've got beets coming out of my ears! Here's something we whipped together to use up our inventory.

Ingredients:

Butter
2 small mashing Potatoes
1 Tbs. blue cheese
1 Apple
Tomatoes
3/4 cup Bread Crumbs
3 cloves Garlic
3 Tbs. chopped Fresh Basil
Olive Oil
1 Beet
Salt and Pepper


Start in by preheating the oven to 400F. Then continue by peeling, coring, and slicing the apple. Peel and Cube the potatoes. Cook each in boiling water until tender.


Drain the apples and make applesauce (plain or sweetened, your choice). Of course, we just need a little bit of apple sauce for this recipe but if you have bucket loads of apples, make bucket loads of applesauce. If you're really intrepid you can then take some of this and cook it down over really really low heat for several hours (double boiler? Crock pot?), which will caramelize the sugars in the applesauce and leave you with apple butter...yum.

For this recipe heat 1 Tbs. butter in a frying pan, spoon in about 3 Tbs. of the applesauce and cook it all for about 30 seconds. This will approximate apple butter for us here real quick. No waiting.

Peel and slice the beet into rings. Beware of beet hands!! Not as bad or as bad looking as biscuit hands, but still. Boil the beet in water until tender.


Slice the tomatoes in half and gently scoop out the seeds and liquids. Set these in a largish baking dish.


Here Sarah has mixed together the garlic, basil, breadcrumbs, and a little bit of the tomato juice to hold it all together. She then added salt and pepper to taste. Having mixed all this together, she then spoons it into the tomatoes, heaping a bit.

Drizzle a little bit of olive oil over all and shove the whole mess into the oven. Roast until the bread crumbs start to brown a little bit.

In the mean time I've drained the potatoes and have added some pepper, butter, and blue cheese before mashing it all with a stick blender (I've probably said it before, but this invention is amazing!).

Spoon the mashed potato onto a tin-foiled baking sheet. Smooth out the peaks so they don't burn in the oven.

After baking for about 15 minutes or so. I can't remember so you'll have to check on it every once in a while.  Lay down a small bed of lettuce. Place a single boiled beet slice on afore said bed. Spoon up one of the potato pods and place this on top of the stack. Top it off with a small amount of apple butter. The bigger the plate, the more you could charge for it in a fancy restaurant.

We put the tomato on a bed of eggy rice and drizzled a little more olive oil over all. It was great.

Eggy Rice:
1 cup white rice
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper to taste
Steam the rice. When done stir in the beaten egg. The heat of the rice should cook the egg. Add salt and pepper to taste.