CHIPS AND DIP

When I shop at a big hipermercado down on the Coast, I'm on the lookout for foods and products that I don’t normally find in the village market—kale and quail, venison and violet potatoes. In the snack section, I discovered vegetable chips cooked with olive oil. I always grab a bag of them, to nosh on the drive home. 

The chips are made with beets, carrots, parsnips and purple potatoes. Something about the salty-sweetness of those vegetables makes them addictive. But the little pack is expensive. Why not make these chips at home? They’re perfect with a party dip.

Crispy vegetable chips with a creamy goat cheese dip.

Snack-pack of veggie chips from the hypermarket.

Because potato chips are fried, I supposed that beet and parsnip chips were fried too. I sliced my vegetables paper-thin (by hand, as I don’t have a mandoline) and heated a pan of olive oil. I fried each vegetable (beets, carrots, parsnips, purple potatoes and rutabaga) separately until golden, then drained the chips on a rack.

Fail! They were not crisp. The next day I spread them on a baking sheet and baked them in the oven (300ºF/10 minutes). This crisped the chips a lot. Still, why bother frying if baking does the trick?

Back to the drawing board. Happy to report, my baked chips with olive oil and sea salt turned out great.

Crispy, baked beet chips. They're sweet and salty, with a hint of olive oil. 

Headed for the chipper! Clockwise from upper left, rutabaga (nabo sueco or "Swede"), beets (remolachas), carrots (zanahorias), purple potatoes (patatas violetas) and parsnips (chirivías). Also good for making chips are taro, plantain, sweet potatoes, turnips.

If you don't have a mandoline slicer, use a vegetable peeler to shave thin strips from parsnips and carrots. 

Cut a slice off one side of the vegetable so it has a firm base on the cutting board. Aim for "paper thin"--1/16 inch. Shown are purple potatoes. Aren't they pretty?

A serrated knife works well for slicing beets, potatoes and rutabaga. 

Place each batch of sliced vegetables separately in a bowl and toss them with enough olive oil to coat them. Spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in preheated oven (325ºF with turbo/fan or 350ºF without fan). Bake 5 minutes and flip the slices over. Continue baking until they are golden and crisped. Time varies with each vegetable. Parsnip chips baked 12 minutes total; beets baked 20 minutes total. Expect the vegetable chips to shrink quite a lot in baking.

Baked chips can be stored in an air-tight container for up to two days. If necessary to crisp them up before serving, spread them on a baking sheet and place in preheated oven at 250ºF for 5-10 minutes.

Chip Dip

Salsa para Hortalizas Curruscantes

Chip dip is made with fresh goat cheese, seasoned with smoked pimentón

This dip starts with fresh, soft goat’s cheese (queso fresco de cabra). If not available use a log of French chêvre, Greek feta or Mexican soft cotija. Taste the dip before seasoning with salt, as the substitute cheeses may be saltier than Spanish queso fresco. Pimentón de la Vera--smoked paprika, either sweet or hot--is the main flavouring. Frying whole cloves of garlic gives them a mellow flavour.

Fresh, soft goat cheese.

6 cloves garlic, unpeeled
Oil for frying
½ cup soft goat cheese or queso fresco
¼ cup Greek yogurt
½ teaspoon hot pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika)
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Sherry vinegar

Whole, fried cloves of garlic.

Lightly crush the cloves of garlic, just sufficiently to split the skins. Heat the oil in small skillet and fry the cloves of garlic until golden. Remove. When they are cool, slip off the skins.

Place the skinned garlic in a mini food processor with the cheese, yogurt, pimentón, cumin, salt and vinegar. Blend to make a smooth dip.

The dip keeps, covered and refrigerated, up to 5 days.



I´m thinking I'll buy myself a mandoline for Christmas and make a batch of vegetable chips every time I turn on the oven.



More recipes with beets:
Waldorf Salad with Beets.
Roasted Beet Salad with Grapefruit.
Moroccan Beet Salad.

More recipes with parsnips:
Savory Parsnip Upside-Down Cake.
Roasted Root Vegetables with Quince.

THE MANY SHADES OF PURPLE

Vegetables in many shades of purple.

I love all things vegetable. Raw, cooked, green, yellow, leaf, stalk or root. And, I’m a sucker for novelty. So, when I saw those lumpy looking purple potatoes, how could I not try them?

Yep, purple potatoes. I’d heard about such things, but never tasted them myself. And here they were at the grocery store. (You might recall I reacted similarly not so long ago to the appearance of purple carrots. Check those out here .)

I bought a pound-sackful of the potatoes, then went back to get more in order to try them in several ways. I also collected some other purple vegetables, just for the visual fun of a still-life in purple.

Purple potatoes, like other blue and purple fruits and vegetables, are a rich source of anthocyanins, valuable antioxidants that help regulate blood pressure, boost the immune system and contribute an anti-inflammatory effect to the body.

Potatoes have purple flesh.

The skins of the potatoes are deep brownish-purple, but cut one open and it reveals a deep purple on the inside. Purple potatoes pale a little with boiling (anthocyanins are water soluble), but they don’t bleed like beets. Baking in their skins is one way to preserve the vibrant violet color. Even better is microwaving.

How do purple potatoes taste? Like potatoes. Like the very best potatoes, wonderfully earthy, a little sweet. They smell more potatoey too, as if they had been freshly dug from the earth. The texture is like a good russet or other baking potato. The ones I bought were all medium-small, golf ball-size.

Lemon juice changes color.

Acid (lemon juice or vinegar) will turn the potatoes toward the red-violet hue; alkaline (such as baking soda) makes them bluer. Shown in the photo, cooked purple potatoes on the left; on the right, cooked potatoes marinated in lemon juice.

Microwave-baked.

I cooked the purple potatoes in various ways. While they make perfectly good fries, once they’re nicely browned, the color hardly matters. A potato gratin with cheese was luscious but, again, the color hardly mattered. Quartered potatoes tossed with olive oil and roasted were perfect and pretty alongside roast lamb. Baked in their skins and served with pungent alioli (garlic mayonnaise), they were sublime. And, a new take on a favorite tapa bar salad—papas aliñadas, with a lemony dressing were a great success.

Remembering the color wheel, I used yellow as a complement to the purple, substituting yellow tomatoes and strips of yellow bell pepper for the red in the classic potato salad (that recipe is here ).

 Purple Potato Salad with Lemon Dressing
Papas Moradas Aliñadas

Purple potato salad with lemon dressing.

Don’t add the lemon dressing to the potatoes until immediately before serving as the acidic lemon juice tends to turn the potatoes to a pink hue. Unless, that is, you prefer a pink potato salad!

Serves 10-12 as a tapa or 6 as a side dish.
   
2 pounds purple potatoes
Salt
Vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Minced scallions or onion
Cherry tomatoes (preferably yellow), halved
Diced yellow or red bell pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil
5 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Sliced hard-boiled eggs
3-ounce can of tuna, drained (optional)
Lettuce to garnish

Place the potatoes in their skins in a pan and cover with water. Add 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon vinegar. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are just tender, about 18 minutes. Drain. When potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them and slice the potatoes into a bowl. Add 1 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Let the potatoes marinate at least 1 hour or, covered and refrigerated, up to 24 hours.

Shortly before serving, add the scallions, cherry tomatoes and diced bell pepper to the potatoes. Combine 4 tablespoons of oil with the lemon juice. Mix into the potatoes.

Spread the potatoes on a platter. Garnish the top with parsley, sliced egg, chunks of tuna, if using. Put a few lettuce leaves on the sides.

Like the classic tapa bar salad, but with purple potatoes.

Roasted Beet Salad with Grapefruit
Ensalada de Remolacha Asada con Pomelo

Beets contain phytonutrients called betatains. (Eat the greens too, lightly sauteed.)

Beets are bleeding hearts—the magenta-hued juice (betacyanins) colors everything. At first I tried to avoid this by layering the beets and grapefruit segments. 

Beets layered with grapefruit.

Beets mixed with grapefruit.

Then I tried combining everything with the dressing and produced a much more vibrant salad, as the beets tinted the grapefruit.

4-5 medium beets
Coarse salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 grapefruit
¼ cup hazelnuts
Chopped scallions to serve
Lettuce leaves to serve

For the vinaigrette
¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds
2 tablespoons grapefruit juice
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Trim the stem and roots from the beets. Wrap them individually in aluminum foil. Place them in an oven pan and bake 1 hour, or until the beets can be easily pierced with a skewer. (Beets never get soft, but stay crisp-tender.) Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Pinch off the skins and cut off stem tops. Cut the beets in half, then into thin wedges and place in a bowl. Sprinkle with coarse salt and 1 tablespoon oil.

Peel pith and skin of grapefruit.

To peel the grapefruit, cut a slice off top and bottom. Place on cutting board and slice down around the curve of the fruit to remove peel and white pith. With a small knife, cut between the membranes, releasing the grapefruit segments. Squeeze the juice into a small bowl.

Toast the hazelnuts in a small skillet. Chop them coarsely.

For the vinaigrette: toast the mustard seeds in a small skillet until they begin to pop. Remove them to a small bowl. Add grapefruit juice, vinegar and honey. Whisk in the olive oil. Season with salt.

Place a layer of greens on salad plates. Combine the beets and grapefruit segments. Stir in the vinaigrette. Divide the beets between the plates. Top with coarsely chopped hazelnuts and sprinkle with chopped scallions.

What about those other purple vegetables and (one) fruit in the photo at the top? With the purple plums I made a spicy plum chutney. With the “red” cabbage, a slaw with apple, carrots and toasted cumin. I put sliced red onions atop a salad with smoked trout and caper berries.  And the eggplant—the purple is only skin-deep—a cheesy pudding baked inside the skins. (Those recipes, next week.)