Two of the twenty-somethings in our Friday night group got married last September. Since they’re both aficionados of microbrews, we gave them a home brewing kit as a wedding present. They were thrilled. Last night was the debut of their first product, a light ale, at a potluck. This necessitated some thinking about what would be appropriate for this occasion. I had a hankering for beet salad, so I decided to make a beet salad with a grainy mustard vinaigrette. The twist was using malt vinegar as the acid in the dressing.
I picked up some yellow and red beets at the fruit stand, along with some carrots in case anyone averse to beets showed up. (One of our former rec.food.cooking newsgroup cronies referred to beets as dirt chunks. Never mind that she won several blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair for her pickled boiled dirt chunks.) I roasted them in a 400° oven, with the red and yellow beets wrapped separately in foil. The yellow beets were done in about an hour; the red ones took over 50% longer, even though they weren’t much bigger.
While I was roasting the beets, I assembled the ingredients for the dressing and cooked the carrots. I had to run to the store and get another bottle of malt vinegar, as we were low. The dressing consisted of 1/3 cup vinegar, 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, a couple of tablespoons of grainy mustard, salt and pepper. Since the whole mustard seeds don’t add much emulsifying power, I had to use more grainy mustard than I would have used with plain mustard. One the beets were cool enough to slice, I did so and stirred in the dressing. I added some fresh thyme to the beet salad. The carrot salad got some chopped carrot leaves. (They are edible.)
Both salads were a big hit. And the ale? Excellent!
(A feeding between the lines alert: The malt in malt vinegar is mostly barley; therefore, this is not appropriate for persons with gluten intolerance or celiac disease.)
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