Fresh Beetroot Greens with Olive Oil Dressing

I fell upon this delicious, simple dish like a starving wolf: I was seized by a deep craving for its metallic greenness, and the earth-blood flavour of its red stalks.

My friends Mike and Michele - whose recipe this is - watched with alarm as I devoured half the bowl, wolfishly licking my chops as I did so.

My pee was a delicate pink all the next day. (One of the other friends at the table, a doctor who is a general practitioner in Johannesburg, told me that she is often faced with patients complaining about blood in their urine. Her first question to them is, 'Have you eaten beetroot recently?').

I cannot think of a vegetable dish I've enjoyed more in the last few years. When I turned 43, about, erm, 1 year ago, I developed a great taste for deep-green leaves, steamed, stir-fried or microwaved and dressed with fruity olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper (or sometimes soy sauce or vinegar).

So profound is my craving for these veg that I would rather eat a tangle of dark greens in a nice dressing than munch on a cold KitKat or a packet of Salt 'n Vinegar crisps. I take this as a sign that my appetite centre has finally reached adulthood.

I've never cooked beetroot greens because I've never seen them sold fresh and crisp at any supermarket. If I do see fresh beetroot in a bundle, the greens have either been torn away and discarded, or are as wilted and sad as a lost sock.

My friends Mike and Michele Karamanof (who are featured, this week, in my South African Food Fundis series; click here for more about them) found these organic beetroot greens at the Jozi Food Market.

I can't give you exact quantities here: taste, and decide.

Fresh Beetroot Greens with Olive Oil Dressing

2 bunches fresh beetroot leaves
water to cover
1 t (5 ml) salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
olive oil
balsamic vinegar (or freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste)
flaky salt and freshly pepper

Wash the leaves well in cold water to remove any grit, and drain in a colander. If you like, you can chop the stalks into 2-cm lengths. Or leave them whole. Half fill a big pot with water, add the salt, and bring to a rapid boil. Add the beetroot leaves, in batches (to avoid the water going off the boil) and cook until the stems are very tender. Drain in a colander. Tip the hot leaves into a big salad bowl and dress with a generous splash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (or lemon juice, or both, to taste). Season well with salt and pepper.

You can also microwave the leaves. This isn't heresy, and your internal organs will not boil. Click here to read more about microwaving veggies.

If you want slightly crunchier leaves, add the chopped stalks to the boiling salted water first, cook until just tender (poke them with the tip of a sharp knife; they are ready when they offer no resistance), and then add the leaves. Cook until the leaves are just wilted.

Tip into a big, deep salad bowl and serve warm or at room temperature.

Lovely mixed with cooked, sliced beetroot.

Serves 8 as a side dish.

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Mike's Youvetsi: a Greek comfort food

This hearty Greek dish of slow-cooked lamb and tomatoes baked with rice-shaped pasta and firm white cheese is wonderful on a chilly autumn evening. Prepare everything in advance, or the day before, and put it in the oven to reheat half an hour before your guests arrive.

This dish comes from the repertoire of Mike and Michele Karamanof, the second local cooks to be featured in my 'South African Food Fundis' series. Click here to read about the Karamanofs.

Any cut of lamb suitable for long, slow cooking can be used - leg of lamb, shoulder of lamb, lamb shanks, or even lamb chops or ribs. 'Don't use a deboned leg of lamb, though,' says Mike, 'as you need the bone in, for flavour.'

If you like, you can marinate the lamb in the olive oil, garlic, oregano and a little white wine for a few hours before it goes into the oven.

There are many variations of this traditional dish - some include onions, cinnamon, cloves, red wine, bay leaves and so on; add more flavourings as you see fit

This is Mike's version, which I think is perfect as it is, tasting only of its key ingredients: lamb and tomato. If you can't find Greek kefalotyri cheese, use a firm feta. 

Mike's Youvetsi
A leg or shoulder of lamb, or 6 lamb shanks (see notes above)
3 T (45 ml) olive oil
2 T (30 ml) good dried oregano
the juice of a lemon
salt and milled black pepper
4 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)
10 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 x 500 g packet Orzo (or similar rice-shaped pasta)
2 cups (500 ml) cubed kefalotyri cheese or feta cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the lamb in a large ovenproof dish or cast-iron casserole dish. If you're using lamb shanks, place them in a single layer in a roasting pan. Pour the olive oil over the top of the lamb and sprinkle with oregano and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Place in the oven, uncovered, and roast at 200°C for half an hour, or until the lamb is beginning to brown on top. Tilt the pan and drain all but about 3 tablespoons of fat away. Now arrange the chopped tomatoes and garlic around the lamb, turn down the heat to 120°C, and return the dish, uncovered, to the oven.

Cook for three to five hours (the cooking time will depend on the size of the leg or lamb pieces) or until the meat is fork-tender and falling away from the bone. Baste the meat occasionally with the pan juices while it's roasting.

Remove the meat from the dish and pull it into shreds or chunks - how big these are is up to you. Discard the bones.  Pile the meat onto a plate, cover, and set aside.

Place the roasting pan on the hob over a medium heat. Add six cups of water (or a mixture of white wine and water, if you like). Bring to the boil, scraping at the bottom of the pan to loosen any residue. Tip in the orzo and cook briskly, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is soft and has absorbed most of the liquid. You may have to add more liquid at this point if the mixture seems dry: it should be about the consistency of a risotto: not stiff or dry, but not swimming in liquid. Season with salt and pepper, tip in the reserved lamb pieces and three quarters of the cubed cheese, and mix gently. Scatter the remaining cheese over the top.

Pile the mixture into an earthenware or ceramic dish (about 10 cm deep is ideal) and cover. When you're ready to serve, place in a low oven (110°C) for half an hour, or until heated right through. Serve with a crisp green salad.

Serves 8  Print Friendly

SA Food Fundis II: Michael and Michele Karamanof

Say I had a choice: indulge in an exquisite meal at the finest restaurant in the city, or enjoy a home-cooked Sunday lunch, under a whispering tree, at the home of Parkview couple Mike and Michele Karamanof. No contest: I would head over to my friends' house with a bottle of wine and no regrets.

Maybe I'm getting old and crabby, but I'm fed up with restaurant food in Johannesburg. I can't afford to eat out often, and when I do, I almost always end up feeling ripped off. I do enjoy a slap-up meal at a good family steakhouse or pizza joint, if it's good value for money, but I really resent forking out R800 to R1000 - which is about what it costs to take five people to dinner at an upmarket restaurant these days, excluding wine - for a meal with absurdly stingy portions, pretentious stacked towers of food, dabs of this, drizzles of that, and shriekingly disgusting 'foamed' sauces that look and taste like spit.

All I want is a full plate - or several plates, for that matter - of honest, gutsy, delicious home-cooked food. I want it hot, I want it fresh, and I want it made in a home kitchen by a friend.

Chemical engineer Mike Karamanof and his wife Michele Botha (a graphic designer) have, for many years, and in their spare time, run a small home industry supplying several Johannesburg restaurants with top-quality home-made products, notably superior home-made pesto and tiramisu.

The Karamanofs are small fish in the Johannesburg-Foodie nibbling order: they're not caterers, chefs, restaurateurs or food professionals, but they are still among the best cooks I know. They have an instinctive love of food, they care about fine ingredients, and they understand simple combinations of brilliant flavours.

Welcome to the second of my new series about local South African food fundis!

Michael Karamanof is an ebullient, warm-hearted Greek with a passion for food that borders on obsession. His knowledge of food and ingredients is encyclopaedic: there are few butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers and wine merchants in Johannesburg with whom he isn't on first-name terms. He loves food, he adores wine, and Michael's idea of heaven is whipping on his apron and spending countless deliriously happy hours cooking for friends and family.

Actually, Mike is a complete know-it-all about food, and the only reason he gets away with this insufferable attitude is because he does actually know an enormous amount about food, and especially Mediterranean food. Mike speaks fluent English, Greek, German and French, and can hold a conversation in Italian and several other languages.

Michele Botha, the thoughtful, organisational, highly creative wing of this partnership, and a talented cook herself, is frequently maddened by Mike (the Karamanofs cannot prepare a meal for friends without having a good argument before everyone arrives).

But, back to the food: although they can cook anything, it's simple Greek food that Mike and Michele really adore. And this passion has accelerated since they bought, a year or two ago, a beautiful, tumbledown old house on the Greek island Kythera. The Karamanofs and their son, Leo, try to get back to the old house twice a year. Most of their time there appears to be spent arguing with builders and architects and each other, while they figure out how to to renovate the place, but they also do manage to spend a lot of time finding, eating, and thinking about food. One of the gorgeous desserts featured here - thickened yoghurt with sweet stewed grapes - is a speciality of Kythera.

For weeks, I've plagued M&M, as they are known among friends, for recipes for my SA Food Fundis section of this blog, and as they haven't produced the goods, on the grounds that they 'don't really have proper recipes' (and they genuinely don't, preferring to cook from their hearts) I'm giving you what they made me for lunch a Sunday ago. This represents a tiny portion of the wonderful food I've eaten at their home over the years.

Our meal started off with beetroot greens - the top leafy portion of beetroots, with their crimson stalks - simply cooked and dressed with olive oil, vinegar and salt, and a loaf of yeasty home-baked bread. Thin-crusted, crispy pizzas, freckled underneath with the black spots you get only from a proper wood-fired pizza outdoor oven (manned by Michael in his apron) and topped with gorgeous mozzarella, anchovy, tomatoes, herbs, mushrooms and the best salami, came next. Then, when we thought it was all over, two earthenware dishes of youvetsi - a dish consisting of rice-shaped pasta (orzo) combined with the tender rippings of lamb cooked for many hours with tomato, and topped with feta. And then, to crown it all, the yoghurt and stewed grapes.

All this around a wooden table, under a tree, in glowing autumn sunshine, and the scent of lemons drifting from a nearby tree in Michele's organic vegetable patch.

Does food get any better than this?

Want to go for dinner at Chez Auberge de La Mon Repose in Poshville, Sandton, for a Tower of Scottish Salmon with Rooibos Jus and Biltong Spit?

I thought not.

Here are the recipes:



- Stewed Sweet Grapes with Thick Yoghurt and Mascarpone, Kythera-style
- Beetroot Greens with Olive Oil
- Mike's Youvetsi


This post is the second in my series about South African Food Fundis. To see the first post, about Gilly Walters of Wedgewood Nougat, click here. Print Friendly