Category: Vege patch, Vegetables, Nature's bounty, Recipes | Post by: Andrea Wong
When I started the vege patch, I raced down to my local plant store with incredible enthusiasm and made my first mistake. I bought what I thought was beetroot seedlings and carefully planted them and watched them flourish.
About a month later, the leaves where big and full. Good enough to eat, I thought!
With my gardening jandals on and my trusty trowel in-hand, I carefully dug around the 'beetroot', careful not to damage the root. But oh, what a disappointment when I dug the plant up. There was no beetroot hidden beneath the soil! I looked at the tag again. "Beet" it clearly said.
Oh.
You should have seen my disappointed face. I held up the dug-up plant to show Mr H, who was watching the first harvest and we giggled. I guess that you have to look on the bright side of things because now I have six healthy beet plants in my garden! It's not my favourite vege but at least it gives me lots of leaves to cook up each week.
Lesson learnt. Repeat after me: "I must read plant labels carefully".
So now I have beet, also known as Swiss Chard. Lots of it. It's like silverbeet, but not as stringy. We have it cooked with stir-fry sauce, in lasagne or made into a quiche. I think that I'm going to be an expert in '100 ways to cook beet' by season's end!
The quiche that I make is really easy and makes a great weekend lunch or light dinner.
Beet and feta quiche
Ingredients
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
400g beet leaves (about 6 large leaves), chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
6 eggs, beaten
2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp pepper
100g feta, crumbled
Directions
- Heat the oven to 190ºC
- Put beet, onion and garlic into a frying pan and sautee for 5-10 minutes over a low heat. This will cook out a lot of the moisture and will help prevent the quiche being soggy
- Beat the eggs, oregano and pepper together
- Spread the beet mixture in a flan dish (I used 20cm) and crumble over the feta cheese. Pour over the egg
- Bake for 20 minutes or until firm in the centre
- Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a few minutes before taking the quiche out of the flan dish.
Serve warm with your favourite chutney and enjoy.