Last Saturday, we enjoyed another delicious Austin food bloggers’ potluck, and this time it was a picnic in a park. There are several great photos from the event at Aimee Wenske Photography and Foodie is the New Forty. I wanted to bake one of my favorite cookie recipes for the potluck, and those cookies were shown in one of my earliest-ever blog posts. I shot a few new photos and updated the post after Saturday’s event. So, the cookies were easy enough, but I also wanted to experiment with a new dish. I had recently read the LA issue of Saveur which is full of beautiful photography, including the cover photo, by Austin’s own Penny De Los Santos. In the magazine, there’s a story about Wolfgang Puck and how he defined California cuisine, and there’s a photo of Beet and Goat Cheese Napoleons that caught my eye to say the least. I had some beets from my CSA, and I thought this dish would be something that could be served at room temperature and had a chance of holding its shape while being transported to a park. I did make some changes though. In the original Puck recipe, individual roasted beets were sliced, cut into equal-sized pieces with a round cutter, stacked with a goat cheese and herb mixture, and then cut into pretty wedges. That resulted in some trimmed pieces going to waste, and I thought it might somehow be simpler to layer everything into a terrine and then cut squares from it. Also, in the original, all red beets were used, but I decided to make it a little colorful and used red, Chioggia, and golden beets.
First, I roasted all the beets and then removed the skins when they were cool enough to handle. Slicing them evenly was quick work with a benriner. For the goat cheese, I softened two nine ounce pieces and added chopped oregano, parsley, and basil from my garden. I used a loaf pan lined with plastic wrap and layered golden beets first, topped with a layer of herbed goat cheese, then another layer of golden beets since they were the biggest beets I had they were used twice, more goat cheese, Chioggia beets, goat cheese, and last were the red beets. I covered the top with plastic wrap and set another loaf pan on top. That top pan was weighted down with a few jars, and this all spent the night in the refrigerator. The next day, I turned the terrine out onto a board and cut it into squares. For the orange vinaigrette, I simplified the process from the original recipe and just combined shallots, orange juice, rice wine vinegar, and olive oil. I tossed some red kale micro greens in the vinaigrette and topped each stacked square with a few of them. Rather than the suggested hazelnuts, I used some walnuts that I had on hand and scattered them about the stacks.
