Tin Foil Beets

Hey folks! This is not RGBisMe posting but true indigo. When the unfortunate unspeakable incident of deleting the original After Image blog occurred, I stepped in as a back-up administrator to safe guard that it would not happen again.

I promise I will not be posting banal things regularly (or even irregularly). I am taking a moment to resserect a family favorite "go-to" After Image post. RGBisMe posted a recipe for Roasted Beets that changed the lives of many of us. I used to have to look it up on the old blog to remember how to make them. Here they are, straight from the original Post Punk Kitchen recipe.....

TIN FOIL BEETS

Unwrapping a tin foil beet is a lot like unwrapping a present. Well maybe not really because you know exactly what’s going to be in there, but it’s still somehow such an exciting surprise. Roasting brings out the beet’s sweet flavor so they’re like precious rubies in a candy box when ready to eat. I usually do two pounds at a time on a weeknight or Sunday afternoon, and use some of them that evening as a side dish with whatever I’m eating. Then I refrigerate the rest and use them in salads or just for a quick snack throughout the week.

The cooking method and time really varies depending on the size of the beets you’re using. If using small beets, say golf ball size, and they are very fresh, then don’t both to peel. Just slice in half, wrap and roast. And remember to save the beet greens to saute with some olive oil and garlic. But if using those big honkers of a beet that you’re more likely to find come January and February, then it’s a little different. Peel them and then slice top down into segments (like orange slices) that are about 3/4 of an inch thick at their widest. If a beet is especially big, say softball sized, then I sometimes will slice widthwise, too. Then, keeping all the slices together in a neat package, place on tin foil and wrap so that it can easily be unfolded from the top.

Roasting time will vary, but I do at least an hour at 425 F. They’re ready when easily pierced with a fork. Be careful when handling, because there will be a lot of red beet juice just dying to drizzle out and stain your countertops. Although maybe that could look cool.

My current favorite quick treatment for roasted beets: toss with fresh orange juice, toasted sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. Salt to taste and add a little Sriracha and you’re as good as gold. Or garnets.

Sydney Underworld of the 1920s and ’30s

via Very Short List


“You may think of the mug shot as the zero degree of portrait photography—no more than a process, an activity not unlike delousing, only superficially connected to the art practiced by Nadar and Steichen and Avedon. And that is true in perhaps 90 percent of cases. But over the course of time, there have here and there been photographers who brought to the process an extra dose of insight that might be called art. In the early twentieth century, the police in New South Wales, Australia, had such an artist—or artists (no names have survived).

Unlike the mug-shot convention of portraying the subject head-on and in profile, the protocols were much looser, so that the accused were sometimes pictured once in close-up and once full-length. And the setting was often a courtyard with a skylight, which softened the contrast. Most important, though, the person behind the camera was someone who recognized the humanity of the varied persons who appeared before the lens, who were sometimes monsters and sometimes innocents, but all of whom deserved consideration. (If not always sympathy; in some shots the photographer apparently declared his or her distaste for the subjects by positioning them in front of the toilets.)

The results are extraordinary—not just a panoramic view of the Sydney underworld of the 1920s and ’30s but a catalogue of astounding faces, fully and spontaneously reacting to someone on the other side of the lens.”


Read the rest here, visit La boite verte’s gallery of Australian mug shots here.