Roasted beets and greens over pasta

But Mom, it tastes like dirt!

That’s what I would have told my mother if she’d tried to make me eat this. Luckily, I have reframed my brain to think of foods that taste like dirt as “earthy.” Next time, still, I’ll peel the beets. No amount of scrubbing removed that special flavor. Sweet beets are the fruit of the earth. Yum!

Adding the pasta--I got a fun shape from World Market--to the cooked beets and greens stained it with a beautiful reddish pink. The addition of cheese and onions was critical to my enjoyment of this dish, which says a lot.

To do: Trim two medium-sized beets of greens. Roast the beets whole and unpeeled in a foil pouch at 375 for an hour (or almost 2 hours if you forget all about them, as I did—apparently there’s no such thing as over-roasting beets).

Sauté half an onion until soft in a large sauce pan.

When they are cool enough to handle, peel beets and cut into large chunks. Add to skillet along with some cooked greens, as much as you and your dining partner like. I used collards, because my beet greens were not looking too spry by the time I got around to using them. Last week, I had microwaved the collards with a bit of water in a covered Pyrex dish, a method which I recommend as an easy way to cook up a mess of greens to be used in some other way later. I suppose you could even cook the greens down in the skillet, but I wanted to precook them to make sure they lasted.

Add 2 servings of cooked pasta to the skillet; toss. Divide into two pasta bowls. Grate a generous amount of parmesan cheese on top.