Red Beet Salad with Berbere Spices and Olive Oil

I cannot figure out how my gourmet life was before I started discovering spices. Most probably it was undernourished, bland, unattractive and tasteless. For someone like me, with a complicated personal history to foods, that pinch of spice added to a plate dramatically changed the taste for good. Spices create unforgettable taste memories that stay with you at least until the next spicy experiment. The more I explore this world of flavors and fragrances, the more I realize how infinite the possibilities of matching and combining are.

As this year I was selected as one of the brand ambassador for the multi-awarded Spice Kitchen UK, my newly discovered passion for spices got a professional direction, as I have to work hard to combine the flavors with usual foods I am using regularly in my kitchen. The experiences are unique, as it gives a completely new life to foods that I was very reluctant to try and prepare before. For instance, red beet. My Eastern European heritage didn't change the fact that I simply cannot stand the smell of it. As for the taste, I find it completely bland - boring, in literary terms - therefore, on the list of 'you better no bother to bring them at home'. Anyway, boiling and preparing them may involve a lot of red traces as...they are called red beets  for a reason. I love a good cold borscht, but preferably prepared by my Russian/Ukrainian friends.

All being said, have no idea what happened to me to decide spontaneoulsy yesterday to purchase some little round dirty looking red beets. Maybe the fact that I haven't created anything worth in my kitchen for a long while, or that the Jewish New Year, the Rosh Hashanah is approaching and needed to boost a bit my creativity? Not sure, but I decided to make the effort and brought the small little something at home. A salad - with olive oil, mint and salt - was an easy solution, but I was looking for something more memorable, able to create those food memories that I may long for in my non-foodie moments. 

As usual in such situation, a look into my spices' cabinet always helps. This time, I wanted a perfect spice, which challenges the original down-to-earth taste of the beets. Aleppo Pepper was a bit too simple while the sumac with its fruity waves was not strong enough to add something to the original taste and the risk was that it gets simply lost into the strong beets flavor. Couple of more minutes of deliberation and I finally set for for Berbere, a spice that I didn't explored too much until now. An basic ingredient in the Ethiopian and Eritrean kitchen, it adds hotness to the meals, with its exquisite combination of: chili pepper, garlic, ginger, basil, nigelly, fenugreek, onion cardamom. A fantastic mix that promised to alter and enrich the red beet.

Once everything was settled, let's start the hard spicy work!

Ingredients

4 small red beets

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon Berbere spice

Directions

Peel the beets. Add them to hot boiling salty water and let them to boil until tender. Once ready, cut it into small slices. Add the olive oil and mix. Spread the Berbere spice and mix. Let it rest at least 20 minutes before serving. Serve it either at the room temperature or cooled in the fridge.

The result: mindblowing! It kept from the original red beet flavor the sweetness and added it to the hotness of the other ingredients. This modest salad was a star at my table. Although I used it as a started, it goes very well as a side dish for salmon or for various mets.

Serves: 2

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: The beets need at least one hour to boil properly. 

Bon Appétit!

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Chicken Liver with Boiled Potatoes and a Pinch of Berbere Spices

Let's talk about the most hateful children foods. For me, the top of the list was liver, any kind of liver, followed by spinach and lamb too. However, I am trying little by little to come along with those foods simply through the act of cooking them. Spinach is getting better, lamb I can accept once in a while, but the liver...it is a very hard job.

I still remember how desperate my poor mother was when once while cleaning the house discovered on the back of the coach small pieces from the very expensive and much praised liver she fought hard to get it on our table. Times changed and I am living now in a place where I can much easier find some kosher liver, but my relationship with this food was never better. Only the sight of the bloody liver - and the memory of the metallic taste (after all, liver operates as a sponge where all the toxines in the body are filtered and it is also that part of the body with the highest concentration of blood, which does not go away even though kashering) made me instantly puke. 

But there are some good healthy advantages of eating liver too, the most important being the high-concentration of iron, which is a great immunity boost. For the love of my son, though, I may change a lot of things in my life - and my diet too, therefore I gave my first ever try at cooking chicken liver myself. And eating it too, for the first time in over 16 years (yeah, I was a teen when I had it last). To be honest, it wasn't that bad - maybe the touch of Berbere spices from Spice Kitchen UK changed everything, who knows - and combined with some simple boiled potato and fresh slices of tomatoes was actually a very rich meaty meal. All you need to know is that you may need a lot of time for boiling and frying the liver, in order to be sure that the blood is going out. The combination of the Berbere spices (red chilli, garlic, coriander seeds, fenugreek, black peppercorns, cloves, paprika, onion powder, black cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, all spices and salt) with fried onions, oil and paprika challenged for good the original liver good. 

Ingredients
2 tablespoon cooking oil
1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped
1 medium-sized yellow bell pepper sliced
600 gr. chicken liver, frozen
2 tablespoon Berbere spices
1 tablespoon lemon juice - it helps when the meat is frozen as it may have a specific unpleasant taste

Directions

Pre-heat the oil in the pan for about 10 minutes. Add the onions and fry until golden. Add the paprika and keep mixing for another couple of minutes. Add the liver, the Berbere spices and 1 big cup of water and let to boil. Mix once in a while, to be sure that the ingredients mix well. Boil until the liver gets a dark brown colour. 

I personally prefered to balance the liver taste with some fresh veggies and the boiled potato. Mashed potatoes also work, or some green salad or avocado. I would dare to add even some couscous or boiled carrots. The most important is to do not have a flavor overload, but only to find that right balance between different ingredients. 

Verdict? As I will not change too much my opinion about liver -it would take another century until I will think about doing my own beef liver anyway and tasting it too - for health reasons I would actually love to try it at least a couple of times the year. With Pesach holidays coming up in a couple of weeks only, I would probably include the chicken liver on one of my regular menus for this time of the Jewish year. 

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour or until ready
Serves: 3

Bon Appétit!

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