Glorious Roasted Beets with Medjool Dates and Toasted Cashews
There is a common misconception that because you are a chef or a cook, you must eat really well. Most of the time, this is not the case.
They say "never trust a skinny chef", and as I write this the image of a cartoonish, overweight, male chef comes to mind. I would argue that the age-old image of the chef, is actually the image of a corporate hotel chef who probably spends his days crunching numbers in an office all day, and possibly has blood pressure issues and/or an alcohol problem. This is a stark contrast to the modern chef and cook, the ones at the local upscale restaurant in your neighborhood, who are in the kitchen creating the dishes you enjoy and participating in manual labor. As cooks, we are very much at the mercy of the restaurants we choose to work in. Often times, restaurants will offer their staff a family meal. However, this is not always the case, many restaurants do not feed the staff. These are usually the restaurants that also schedule you to start at three, but really expect you to come in at noon and work unpaid until three. And we do, because we are students and artists and dreamers; we are lovers of food and fire and the adrenaline rush that comes with serving 60 people within one hour. But truthfully, it's also because we know that if we come in at three, and service starts at five, there is no way in hell we can prep enough to feed 300, in just two hours.
In restaurants such as these, we make bits and pieces for ourselves.
A small sandwich of prepped ingredients can be all we eat that day. We may make a bit more of the beet salad that someone ordered and, drop a few extra pig ears into the fryer (cut to: me drooling). But that is it, we make our meals out of bits and scraps that would otherwise end up on a customer's plate. That sounds like stealing, but I adjure you to think of it as a gift. After all, it's likely we've hit forty hours that week and we still have two days left until the schedule resets. Plus, I like the idea that when I order something at a restaurant, I might be feeding a cook as well, meager as it may be.
Then there is the home life of a chef, the minuscule time we have to ourselves after, or before, spending thirteen hours that day hours cooking for others. This precious time, is full of Annie's Mac n' cheese, Chinese food cartons, pizza boxes, Pad Thai and burrito wrappers. Anything that is either made by someone else or takes little to no brain power to make. There is nothing left inside of us at the end of the day but a desire to be fed; to sit on a chair and eat food that someone else made.
I must confess there is some rationale in the notion that we eat like kings.
We spend all of our time in kitchens, surrounded by gourmet food. Furthermore, a great deal of our lives is spent imagining what others might like to eat, dreaming up masterpieces and giving our heart and soul to make sure the customers have a wonderful experience. Naturally, we do get sick of thinking about you all the time and come together with our comrades to create feasts for ourselves. On our days off, or the extremely rare holiday in which the restaurant is closed; the likeminded brothers and sisters of the service industry (and those lucky enough to be in our orbit) will enjoy a feast together. Or to put it in restaurant terms: we make some bomb-ass-food.
Roasted Beets with Dates and Cashews
Ingredients
- 3 large beets of any color, cut into 1" dice
- 1/2 yellow onion, large dice
- 1/4 c fresh orange juice
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 medjool dates
- 1/2 tsp rosemary, minced
- 1/2 c cashews
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 425 F.
- Combine onions and beets in a baking dish with 1" sides. Add fresh orange juice, apple cider vinegar, salt, a few grinds of fresh black pepper, sprigs of thyme and mix to combine.
- Cover the beets with a piece of parchment and then cover the baking dish tightly with foil. Place in the oven and set a timer for 25 minutes.
- While the beets are roasting, prepare the remainder of your ingredients. Pit the dates and cut in half lengthwise, then cut each half into 6 pieces widthwise, now you should have little half-circles. Place dates in a small bowl and mix with the lemon juice. Set aside.
- You can toast your cashews in the oven while your beets are roasting. But be sure to keep a close eye, at 425 F, it will only take about 5 minutes for the nuts to toast. Once the cashews have cooled a bit, roughly chop them.
- Remove the foil and parchment from the beets and give them a stir to keep them from drying out. Continue roasting for 15-20 minutes, uncovered.
- Remove the beets when they are fork tender. Mix in the dates, lemon juice, fresh rosemary, and check for seasoning. Top with toasted cashews and enjoy! These will store well for up to 3 days.