Chocolate with salt

Not only am I late this week once again, it's also beetroot again, but in my defence, it's that time of the year and I still had some left in the fridge. Beside, I just love beetroot.
I had to promise my husband though, I wouldn't dish up beetroot for a while, especially after I presented him a fresh squeezed beetroot-apple juice the next morning and I must admit, I kind of overdid it. A bit.

I also promise, I will get better with my writing. It's not like I'm not cooking or baking, I just can't find the time to actually sit down and write. I vow to improve.

I have to share this dish with you, as it was a superb combination with the hake and I can imagine it to be the perfect partner for many fish species.

I found the recipe here, in one of my favourite German recipe databases and followed the recipe almost as is.   And as much as I like to adjust recipes to my liking or just take them as an inspiration, much the same I'm happy to find a recipe I can go with.

To freshen it all up, I served the Hake on a beetroot purée with some leafy greens in a tasty vinaigrette.

Lately I struggle to find the time and leisure to write. I don't know if I should blame it on the sleepless nights due to my baby boy or the famous springtime lethargy.
Yes, it's springtime in Windhoek and it's nice and warm and just beautiful. It's my favourite time of the year, with very nice temperatures, it's already hot, but not too hot and there are no mosquitoes, bees, moths, cockroaches and any other crawling stuff yet.
We are also busy preparing our veggie garden. This winter we decided on throwing everything out, feeding the soil and starting from the beginning and I promised myself to learn from my mistakes made the last years and hope we will have a bigger yield this year. I would also like to invest more time in my garden and I'm really looking forward to it.
With the beginning of the spring and the temperatures rising, our appetite for salads is back. What a better way of saying goodbye to the winter than with a combination of winter salad with fresh and young beetroot.
I must honestly admit, that I wasn't sure, if beetroot is edible raw. Only when I started researching for that matter I realised, that I was drinking beetroot juice for ages without giving it a thought for once. So the obvious answer is, yes, beetroot is edible raw and very healthy.
To make the salad substantial, I added my gratinated goats cheese croutons was a match made in heaven  with the sweetness of the beetroot and the fruitiness of the pear.

The first time I've made that dish, we were growing beetroot in our garden and all the beetroot was ready at the same time, so I was looking for different dishes I could work with. I love beetroot, but the only dishes I could come up with, were salad or soup. I wasn't in the mood for either of those. I knew, I will cook some beetroot and preserve for later, but there was still plenty left. So I stumbled upon that recipe, but decided to use a tart I knew from another recipe I've made several times already. I love that dough recipe, as it's really quickly done and doesn't contain half a cube of butter (as you maybe remember, I'm trying to lose some weight). Also I'm not a fan of puff pastry tarts - I guess it's also the butter content. Don't get me wrong, I love puff pastry, but not in that kind of dishes. Beside, there are so many fantastic tart doughs and using puff pastry is kind of boring, to me at least.
Why am I telling all this, because every time I've made that tart, I thought, it must taste great with goats cheese. So that time my inspiration came from the goats cheese lying in my fridge and of course the glass of ready-to-eat beetroot in my pantry. As I said, the very first time, I've made the tart with fresh beetroot and wasn't that stoked about the outcome. Since I'm using jarred beetroot, I like the taste much more. And that's really rare, as I normally prefer fresh products.
By the way, we don't grow beetroot in our garden anymore, because we are way too impatient and somehow the bugs in our garden seemed to love the beetroot at least as much as we do. So no beetroot anymore, we tried carrots instead. But that's another story.

Let's start with my Beetroot tart with red onion confit, goats cheese and walnuts