Use Your Booty: Beet Carpaccio

This is one of the recipes (barely a recipe) that is great for summer - it's super fast, easily adaptable and is a nice, cooling addition to a meal. Carpaccio is traditionally a dish of very thinly sliced or pounded beef, garnished with olive oil, onion and capers. It's been adapted in recent years, to be a dish of thinly sliced something (scallops, zucchini, seared lamb, etc.).

Fresh beets are a great ingredient to highlight in this way. I thinly sliced two types of beet: Chioggia (those are the bullseye ones) and red beets. I laid the slices [in a somewhat slapdash manner, I'll admit] onto a plate with some thin slices of baby onion, drizzled them with chive vinegar, olive oil, salt & pepper and a few onion flowers.

That's it. I like to dress the vegetable carpaccio dishes a few minutes before we eat them, so the vegetables can soften up a little in the oil and vinegar.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog. I paid for my livestock share.