Beetroot, blackberries, dill & pine nuts

Ingredients

2 beetroots

1 punnet of blackberries

1 large bunch of fresh dill

Rapeseed oil

Xanthan gum

Balsamic vinegar

Pine nuts

1-2 tbl sp of sugar

Method

*The day before*

Save some dill fronds for garnish. Blanche the rest of your dill and plunge into ice water. Pat dry. Measure out 200ml of rapeseed oil in a saucepan and heat gently. Get your dill and dry as much as possible and blitz it with the warm oil. Strain through a jay cloth in a sieve over a bowl. Decant. Fridge.

I've used blackberries that I fermented with tarragon here but fresh is perfectly fine- just dissolve some sugar to taste in a pan, bring to a boil then chuck the blackberries in and turn the heat off and set aside.

Boil the beetroots for around 20-30 mins until a knife will easily get to the centre without much resistance. Roast beetroots in an oven at 180oC, for 20 mins then put into big bowl of cold water and peel them in the water itself, being sure to save the liquid.

Strain all the bits out and reduce aggressively with a slosh balsamic vinegar to a syrup, then add the sugar water from your blackberries in and reduce to a syrup again. Use a tablespoon or so to glaze your blackberries and set aside.

Toast your pine nuts until golden and set aside.

Halve your beetroots. Dice one half finely, slice another finely, slice another into wedges and coat all in some of the syrup. The final half gets blitzed with blackberries and passed, ensuring it's totally smooth. Blitz again with incremental bumps of xanthan gum and a good amount of the syrup- you can always off-set with small amounts of water and you can even add your dill oil to help the emulsification along.

Taking the last bit of syrup and a teaspoon of the puree, add your xantham gum to make a gel.

Plate.

The dust you can see is beetroot salt and beetroot sugar which I made using the leftover liquid in my dehydrator, the same goes for the beetroot crisps.