When you understand that vegetables can be spectacular and that depending on how you cook and combine them, you can bring out their best qualities, then you have much to gain from cooking and enjoying. Today’s recipe is a great example of this and that you don’t need a piece of meat to make a dish tasty: it’s perfect for a pica pica dinner accompanied by good bread.
The cooking method plays a major role here: beets and carrots score a thousand points in taste, texture and color when roasted. They get sweeter as their own sugars caramelize, take on nutty notes, and are toasted to a crispy outside, with a golden color that screams “eat me.” Beets, in particular, become more intense when baked whole and with the skin on, so I recommend that you look for not very large ones so they cook faster that way. So is it wrong to cook them in water, steam or even in the microwave? No, of course not, but you will get different results, which are desirable on other occasions.
To take advantage of the fact that we’ve turned on the oven, we’re going to add some seasoned chickpeas to this dish, which we’re not going to cook until the last few minutes of roasting the veggies. In this case, they have turmeric, garlic powder, and hot paprika powder, but you can add whatever spices and/or herbs you like best.
As the base of this dish we have labneh, a type of drained and concentrated yoghurt, fresh and milky that contrasts very well with the spiciness of the chickpeas and the sweetness of the beets and carrots (this fresh-spicy-sweet trio is somewhat useful if you think of your dishes). To prepare the labneh you can follow this video step by step. If you don’t have the time or inclination, you can substitute unsweetened Greek yogurt.
difficulty
The one who finds little turnips.
Ingredients
for 4 people
- 6 small turnips
- 2 or 3 carrots
- 350g labneh or unsweetened Greek yogurt
- 200 g cooked chickpeas
- ½ teaspoon hot paprika powder
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt
- freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash beets and carrots well. Cut the thinnest stalk and stalks from the beets, leaving 1 cm (reserve the leaves and stalks for other preparations). Peel carrots, quarter lengthways (halve first if very long).
Place the carrots and beets in a bowl and add extra virgin olive oil, fine salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you want to add an herb like rosemary or a few cloves of garlic, you can do that too. Stir it so that all the beets and carrots are well impregnated. Place them on a baking sheet (don’t fill the entire oven as you’ll need to line another sheet with the chickpeas) and cover with aluminum foil. Bake them for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, toss the chickpeas with three tablespoons of olive oil, finely ground salt, hot paprika, turmeric, garlic powder, and black pepper. Mix everything well and spread out in one layer on another baking sheet if possible. Once the first 20 minutes of cooking the veg is up, pop it in the oven.
Remove the foil and bake the vegetables for another 20 minutes or until tender. The carrots should be golden brown and the skin of the beets wrinkled.
Make a base with the labneh on a plate and place the seasoned chickpeas on top. Peel the beets, remove the stalks and quarter. Place them on top of the chickpeas along with the carrots. Finish off with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, black pepper and fresh herbs of your choice.
If you make this recipe, share the result on your social networks with the hashtag #RecipesComidista. And if it goes wrong, complain to the Defender of the Cook by sending an email to [email protected].