RECIPE: Golden beet poke (from F*ck, That’s Delicious by Action Bronson and Rachel Wharton)
I’m a beet bitch: I love beets. They have a sweet, earthy, rustic type of emotion. Ask Mario. It’s what I always order at his restaurant Babbo—that and the octopus and five kinds of pasta. All root vegetables, really, are amazing. A few years ago, when I went to the Banzai Pipeline on the island of Oahu to do a show at the Pipe Masters surfing competition, I came home dreaming of poke. It’s a Hawaiian thing, this delicious sh*t you just go get at the corner store in Hawaii, with chips and Gatorade, made of cut-up chunks of raw fish usually dressed with soy sauce and green onions, but you can go from there. I was shopping at the farmers’ market the first time I ever tried to make it at home, high out of my mind, and I spotted some golden beets. I poke-ed that too, and invented some delicious sh*t.
Serves 2
You know the Hawaiian chef dude who always does the luaus on TV, Roy Yamaguchi? He’s the one who first put me on to this sh*t. But now poke is trendy—anything healthy is trendy. At the Kahuku Superette on the Kamehameha Highway in Hawaii, they serve their special poke bowls in plastic takeout containers over a pile of white rice and you eat it with wooden chopsticks, the kind you get with Chinese takeout.
- 1-inch piece (22 g) fresh ginger, peeled
- 2 green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced
- ½ Maui, Vidalia, or other large sweet onion, quartered and thinly sliced
- 2 cups (280 g) peeled, roasted golden beets cut into ¾-inch (2 cm) cubes (See note)
- 2–3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon cane sugar
- 1 tablespoon chopped medium-hot fresh chile,
- such as jalapeño
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, freshly toasted, plus extra for garnish
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
- ½ tablespoon Japanese togarashi spice mix, or to taste
- Fresh limes
- Steamed white rice
- Grate the ginger into a large mixing bowl. You want about 1½ tablespoons. If you don’t have a grater, just start spooning it—scraping the ginger into the bowl. It’s like juicing it at the same time. Then add the onions.
- Toss the beets into the bowl and add 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce, and the sesame oil, cane sugar, and chopped chile.
- Give it all a nice toss, a nice mix-up, then taste. Let it sit in the icebox a little bit until it’s chilled. (The icebox is the refrigerator.)
- Hit it with the toasted sesame seeds, which changes the whole complexity of the dish, right there. I like to use white and black, aka the swirl.
- Get some good cilantro from the farmers’ market. Now you’re going to hit it with that. Sprinkle the bowl with togarashi, then you hit it with some lime juice to liven it up.
- Adjust the seasoning to your liking, adding more soy, sugar, togarashi, and lime juice as you like, sprinkle on a few more sesame seeds, and serve over white rice.
NOTE: From about 1 pound (455 g) of beets. I know people usually don’t put olive oil on their beets when they roast them whole, but I think they get really dry otherwise. I drizzle it on and let them soak it up on the pan so as they roast it gets sticky and sh*t, about an hour at 400°F (205°C). Let them cool and you can just peel them with your hands. That’s why we roast golden beets; they don’t stain the hands.
This ain’t no cookbook. This ain’t no memoir. This is Action Bronson’s devotional, a book about the overwhelming power of delicious—no, f*cking amazing—food. Bronson is this era’s Homer, and F*ck, That’s Delicious is a modern-day Odyssey, replete with orgiastic recipes, world travel, siren songs, and weed.
Illustrated, packed with images, and unlike any book in the entire galaxy, Bronson’s F*ck, That’s Delicious includes 40-plus recipes inspired by his childhood, family, tours, and travels. Journey from bagels with cheese that represent familial love to the sex and Big Macs of upstate New York fat camp and ultimately to the world’s most coveted five-star temples of gastronomy. And: the tacos in LA. The best Dominican chimis. Jamaican jerk. Hand-rolled pasta from Mario. Secrets to good eating from Massimo. Meyhem Lauren’s Chicken Patty Potpie. And more! more! more!
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