Every home cook must have a signature beetroot and goat cheese dish.
It’s a popular combo and a familiar starter on many restaurant menus. I keep coming back to this as a starter for dinner parties. It has colour, it is mildly exotic with its use of goat cheese, it is not too filling or meaty. The flavours are pronounced and stimulate the appetite.
I should have my own signature version – but I keep making one based on Jason Atherton’s recipe in ‘Gourmet food for a fiver’. He has a few cheffy processes I like: he extracts flavour and makes a deep intense beetroot sauce, he adds sweetness, (which makes sense for an inherently sweet ‘beet’ – but also offsets the mineral, earthiness some find difficult with beetroot), and finally he uses very mild goat cheese – rather like a loose creamy fondant. Not too much goat taste and easy freshness to offset the richness of the other elements.