Golden Beet, Beet Green & Goat Cheese Pesto

For those new visitors or for any regular readers that need a reminder, one of my hobbies is to receive a pile of random ingredients without prior knowledge of them with the goal of creating a meal on the spot, without planning. 

All of my recent efforts in this area, which I call spontaneous cooking at home (TM), are fun for me as well as frustrating.   Sometimes I really nail a flavor combination, sometimes I don't.   Sometimes I plate a dish that I love to look at, sometimes it sucks ass. That's just the nature of these spontaneous experiments.

This is a recent spontaneous effort with golden beets.  They were presented to me fully attached to their green leaves on top.  I decided I would use the greens as a pesto-like condiment for the roasted yellow beets.  I roasted the beets with a glug of olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and wrapped in a foil packet so they could steam in the oven.   I then washed the beet greens, blanched them for :30 in boiling salted water and drained them.  I then placed the greens in a food processor with a glug of EV olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, pine nuts and a few pinches of a firm, aged goat cheese.  I whizzed them together and had a very earthy, creamy, nutty pesto like dressing.  It was a bit creamier than the traditional oil based pesto, but we all know that goat cheese and beets work together and so did this.

I didn't really nail the plating of the dish.  I attempted to place the thinly sliced beets in a piled layer,add a dollop of pesto, pile of beets, layer of pesto, etc.  It would have been better/neater looking if I had done it in a ring mold, but it tasted great as a salad to start our meal.  It was also a technique that proved to be a nice way to utilize an entire bunch of beets.  Great taste, suck-ass plating (TM).