Recipe: beet gazpacho with an insane vinaigrette
Restaurant De Kas serves exclusively vegetable dishes from its own garden. In the new cookbook Restaurant De Kas – From the land to the plate, chefs Wim de Beer and Jos Timmer take you from the nursery in Amsterdam and their garden in the Beemster polder to the restaurant, where they show you how to make 80 delicious vegetable recipes, such as this beet gazpacho with an insane vinaigrette, at home.
Wim: “Beet gazpacho is a Kas classic. Our menu naturally changes with the seasons, but we have beets from our own garden for a large part of the year. They always get off to a slow start, but once they get the hang of it, they just keep going. Craupedine beets, torpedo-shaped beets, yellow beets and, of course, small sweet beets in the warmer months. It is always a good start to a fun dinner, in both summer and winter. Castelfranco is one of the most beautiful types of lettuce there is. The slightly bitter leaf has a unique color; each cream-colored leaf is covered with spots and veins ranging in color from burgundy red to light violet. The sweetness of the beets pairs well with the bitterness of the lettuce and bergamot. If you roast the beets on coarse sea salt, they develop a deliciously briny flavor, but they can also simply be cooked in the oven with a little thyme and garlic.”
How to make the beet gazpacho with vinaigrette
- Place 0.5 kg beets with the remaining gazpacho ingredients in a food processor and blend into a fine purée. Then push the mixture through a fine sieve and season the gazpacho with salt and pepper. If the gazpacho is a little too thick, you can add some extra beet juice. Taste carefully: it should be sweet, earthy but also fresh from the vinegar.
- Bring all the ingredients for the bergamot vinaigrette to a boil in a saucepan. As soon as the sugar has dissolved, pour the mixture into a bottle and keep it refrigerated. It keeps for a long time and is delicious in all kinds of salads. For now, we use only a little, mixed with olive oil in a ratio of 1:3.
- Peel the remaining 0.5 kg beets, cut them into large pieces and season with the vinaigrette.
- For plating, start with the beet gazpacho. Then garnish with the lettuce, beet and sorrel. Drizzle the bergamot vinaigrette over everything.
Title: Restaurant De Kas Amsterdam – From the land to the plate
Authors: Jos Timmer and Wim de Beer
Price: €34,99
Publisher: Kosmos
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