Smoky Beet Lox (v, gf)
I recently went to the vegan cafe Terms of Endearment for the first time, which does a pretty impressive croissant and makes breakfast sandwiches on them like bacon-egg-and-cheese or cream-cheese-and-lox. The BEC was satisfying, but almost all vegan cheese tastes a little artificial to me, so the beet lox one was my favorite. When I saw golden beets at the farmers’ market, I was still thinking about that sandwich and decided to make my own version, which I wanted to be more like smoked salmon.
I’m using my favorite cooking method for the beets here: salt-roasting, which makes the insides salty and somehow tastier than any other way I’ve cooked them. The method here involves making a paste with salt, flour and water, which uses up less salt than just covering them with salt (that’s how did it at Dirt Candy). To get the smoky and briny flavors of smoked salmon, I’m relying on a long marinade with lapsang souchong, a smoked black tea, and dulse, which is a fish food-looking red seaweed that itself is a little smoky, salty and umami in flavor.
The resulting lox slices are a bit too salty on their own, but great as part of a sandwich. We had them classic-style — on everything bagels with cream cheese, red onion and capers — and in rye sandwiches with cream cheese, cucumber, capers and fresh basil. Combine it with whatever you want, but capers are a good addition to add extra brininess.
Makes ~5 sandwich fillings
Ingredients
3 bigger or 5 smaller golden beets (~12oz with leaves removed), scrubbed clean
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoons lapsang souchong tea leaves
1 tablespoon brown rice vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 tablespoons dulse seaweed
Method
Salt-roast the beets: Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Combine the flour and salt in a bowl and add enough water to form a kind of dough. Pack the mixture around each beet so that the skin is completely covered. Place the beets in a glass or metal oven-safe dish.
Roast the beets for about 45 minutes, or until a knife can pierce them through the middle (if you have several beets of different sizes, you could take out the smaller ones earlier).
While the beets cool, brew the tea in 1 cup of almost-boiling water for about 5 minutes. Strain out the tea leaves.
In a bowl, mix together the tea, vinegar, olive oil, peppercorns and dulse.
When the beets are cool enough to handle, crack open their crusts and take them out. Use a vegetable peeler to peel off the skin, then use a sharp knife to slice them into 1/4 inch thick (or thinner) slices.
Choose a vessel for marinating the beets, like a glass bowl or dish or a Ziploc bag (avoid metal). Put the beets and marinade together in the vessel and get all the slices well-covered.
Put the marinating beets in the fridge for at least a day (I did 48 hours), or up to about 4 days.
Serve however you want! Shake off the peppercorns, but leave on as much marinade as you can. I recommend including capers however you eat it, which will increase the brininess.
