Recipe: Beets & Mushrooms by Chef Nate Hereford

I am an obsessive watcher of Mind of a Chef, an avid reader of high-end cookbooks, and quite possibly a restaurant groupie. I'd rather sit at the Chef's Counter in a restaurant than the first row of a Cardinal's game. With that obsession comes a new addition to Whiskey And Soba: chef recipes. The best seat in town is at Niche's counter, watching executive chef Nate Hereford and his team effortlessly create edible art. Hereford's passion for continuous improvement and working with local ingredients is infectious. He's inspired me to forage for mushrooms around my yard, which has only resulted in a psychedelic experience once.

A few weeks back, after enjoying a beautiful beet dish, I told him how hard it is for me to think of vegetarian recipes outside of your typical roasted/sautéed variety—that's when it hit me. Let's have the chef of St. Louis' James Beard winning restaurant create recipes using local and seasonal ingredients to help everyone cook better.

Hereford's first dish is beets with roasted maitake mushrooms, miso yogurt, candied pecans, oregano, and a quick spruce (rosemary for the home cooks) pan sauce. It may look complicated, but any decent home cook will be able to pull this off flawlessly.

"It's January, it's cold out, I wanted something vibrant but speaking to the season. Here we have beets, a great winter ingredient that grow really well around here in winter, as well as locally cultivated maitake (Hen of the Woods) mushrooms. I thought the earthy flavors of the two things would go really well together." 

Something that struck me from my first meal at Niche was the huge variation of texture in every dish. "You want texture, but you want to balance the textures in every bite. The mushrooms have one texture, the two different kinds of beets have two different textures. When I construct a dish, I want to make sure I'm really focusing on the element you’re focusing on. The pecans are going to add sweetness as well as crunch, the yogurt gives you a creaminess, and the sauce on the plate ties it all together with acid. The oregano gives a background herbal note, refreshing your palate as you eat. Typically, when we think of dishes and start to construct ideas, we try to follow that pattern. We find that it allows constant excitement when you’re eating a dish. You’re always finding new flavors, new textures, cleansing your palate."

Beets

miso yogurt, mushrooms

by Nate Hereford

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Beets with Miso Yogurt, Mushrooms

YIELD: 6 | PREP: 1 HOUR | ACTIVE: 10 MINUTES | TOTAL: 1 HOUR AND 10 MINUTES

INGREDIENTS

BEETS

12 red beets
salt
canola oil

BEET SYRUP

2 C maple syrup
2 C white distilled vinegar.
2 C water

MISO YOGURT

1 C white miso
1 C greek yogurt
1/2 C whipped cream
salt

CANDIED PECANS

1 C pecans
2 egg whites
1 C sugar
salt

MUSHROOMS

Hen of the Woods mushrooms
butter
salt
fresh oregano
1 rosemary sprig
2 T white distilled vinegar

METHOD

Beets

Preheat oven to 300.

Toss beets with just enough oil to cover, salt, then wrap beets in foil. Bake until tender, checking every 30 minutes. A knife should slide in easily. It should take roughly 1 hour. Once cool enough to handle, peel the beets (gloves are advised to avoid stained hands). Once peeled, set 3 aside. Using a mandoline, thinly slice beets about 1/16 of an inch (if using a knife, do your best to cut them very thinly). Set aside.

Dice the remaining 9 beets into assorted organic shapes. Whatever your heart desires.

Beet Syrup

Combine the maple syrup and the vinegar in a pan. Bring to a simmer. Turn the heat down and slowly reduce by about 1/2. Once brought down by 1/2, add the water, stirring to combine. Slowly reduce by 1/2 again. It should taste sweet and acidic. Brush on to or spoon over larger beet chunks.

Miso Yogurt

Whip the cream with a mixer. Blend miso and yogurt until a smooth puree is formed. Place in a mixing bowl and fold in whipped cream. Season with salt to taste. Set aside.

Whipped cream is optional if you’re short on time or lazy.

Candied Pecans

Whisk eggs whites with the sugar and salt until frothy. Add in pecans. Place on a sheet tray and bake at 325, stirring every 5 minutes until done (about 30 minutes).

Mushrooms

Tear the Hen of the Woods mushrooms into chunks and roast in a hot pan with canola oil. Finish with butter, basting until butter is browned. Season with salt.

Remove mushrooms from the pan and lower heat. Add rosemary sprig to pan and briefly cook to bring out aromatics. Deglaze pan with white distilled vinegar. Pour sauce in small bowl and set aside.

Plating

Plate at your heart’s content. To do it like Nate, spoon a dollop of miso yogurt on the plate, then use the back of the spoon to make a swoosh. Place the larger beet chunks on the miso. In between the beets, place the mushroom chunks and pecans. Place oregano in 2-3 places. Lay thinly sliced beets on top, as seen below. Drizzle with the rosemary sauce to finish.

Yum

Niche

Update: Niche has closed. 

The last time I took my girlfriend out for a celebratory dinner, we went to JAAN in Singapore, which was ranked #22 in Asia at the time. The dishes were complex, creative, delicious and overall mind blowing. How could I top it? For similar haute cuisine, there were two main options in St. Louis: Sidney Street Cafe or Niche. I opted for Niche with its constantly changing and oft praised menu. If you follow my reviews, you know I am obsessed with Chef Gerard Craft's Pastaria and very much enjoyed Brasserie, so my hopes for Niche were sky high.

Niche's menu is set up in a manner that allows you to pick a la carte, a four-course meal ($65) or the chef's tasting menu ($95). Our waitress, Laura, guided us through the menu like a Sherpa and patiently explained each dish to us. She was great.

The Coxhina kicked off the meal with a bang. The coxhina I've had in the past were almost like samosas, but these were bite-sized balls of hot and gooey Brazilian cream cheese and chicken skin on top of a tangy bed of sorrel aioli. If there were such a thing as mozzarella cheese sticks for adults, these would be them. If they served these at Pastaria (which is connected to Niche), I would get them every. single. time.

Following on the theme of tiny fried balls of deliciousness came the Smoked Trout Beignets. While each beignet was tres petite, they packed in a huge amount of flavor. It was almost like the essence of perfectly smoked trout inside, served with a sweet sorghum butter and chives. Cafe du Monde beignets got nothin' on these.

coxhina Niche Restaurant st.louis

trout beignet Niche Restaurant st.louis

Perhaps the most unusual course of the whole evening was the Tea. Toasted oak tea was poured over a paper thin slice of lemon and a nearly invisible sheet of smoked and rendered pork fat. I have never had anything like this before. If you've ever used a BBQ smoker, then you know that you have to put a water shelf inside to help regulate temperature and to collect some of the drippings. This tea tastes like you imagine that smoker water would taste (if it tasted good). Sort of like drinking a whole wood fired BBQ.

oak tea Niche Restaurant st.louis

Dia's Cheese Bread & Chartcuterie platter graced our table next. Prosciutto on one side, pickled vegetables on the other. Licorice pickled white asparagus, dill pickled green tomatoes and strawberry pickled fennel: all good, all things I'd never had before. It's funny how each course, no matter how big or small, swayed our conversation. By this point we were making plans to go home and pickle anything we could find. Chocolate milk pickled daikon maybe?! It was like a sketch out of Portlandia.

dias cheese bread Niche Restaurant st.louis

pickles Niche Restaurant st.louis

The prosciutto was good, but the dish's namesake was the star. Dia's Cheese Bread was holy shit amazing. I've eaten a lot of cheesy breads in my life, but none have even gotten close to this. It came out warm with crispy bits of cheese on the outside and an interior so gooey, so cheesy, so incredible that I reached nirvana. I don't care if you don't like charcuterie or pickles. Get this dish just for the bread. Give your table neighbors the other stuff. I would be morbidly obese if I worked at Niche, since I would asked be paid in cheese bread. I wish I had taken a picture of the gooeyness, but I was too busy shoving food in my face to take any. Sorry.

Another memorable dish is a Niche standard: the Egg. Oddly enough, JAAN also had an egg as their signature dish. Niche's egg was filled with a lemon maple custard at the bottom, then a layer of sauteed mushrooms, and finally topped by dashi "caviar". It was like a really good version of a Japanese chawanmushi.

The egg at Niche Restaurant

My next course was the Asparagus Soup. A bowl was brought to the table with chive blossoms, buckwheat, garlic whipped cream and some sort of sweet jelly, then the soup was poured in on top. Like most of the main dishes, it just made me think of springtime. The soup itself was rich and undoubtedly asparagus, but the random spoonfuls with the crunchy buckwheat or the sweet jelly made it something special.

soup bowl Niche Restaurant st.louis

asparagus soup Niche Restaurant st.louis

My girlfriend went with the Fava Beans. It was the smaller of the two dishes, so I was a gentleman and only tried a small bite of it. The pretty little dish was comprised of fava beans, new potatoes, chives, ricotta creme fraiche, dehydrated potato skins and candied lemons.

fava beans Niche Restaurant st.louis

Berger Bluff Carrots with quinoa, buttermilk, herbs and carrot-bushi shavings were out next. The carrot-bushi is a take on a Japanese technique. It was smoked and dried, resulting in a little intense stick of carrot goodness. Genius.

carrots Niche Restaurant st.louis

By this point we were getting pretty full, but we still had a ways to go...

I got the Chicken Liver layered between thin slices of brioche with crunchy peanuts and strawberry preserves and topped with celery leaves. Undoubtedly the best chicken liver dish I've ever had. This was a childhood favorite revamped for classy adults. My girlfriend went with the Smoked Pork Shoulder. Once again, I only took a small bite of her dish, but it had tender, smokey pork shoulder, brussel sprout leaves, hickory ice cream, popcorn and pecans. She devoured it, so I guess it was pretty good.

pork shoulder Niche Restaurant st.louis

chicken liver Niche Restaurant st.louis

Before our final non-dessert dishes came out, we were given another childhood flashback: ice pops. Granted, these were filled with kombucha and 4 Roses Bourbon, so the flavors were a bit more adult than your normal ice pop. Great presentation.

bourbon popsicle Niche Restaurant st.louis

We finished the meal with the Akaushi Ribeye and the Quail. The ribeye came with a ramp puree, fingerling potatoes, onion, chicharrons, and honey. The quail was accompanied by turnips, orange, tarragon yogurt and sourdough. While the ribeye was very good, I would easily pick the quail over it.

ribeye Niche Restaurant st.louis

quail Niche Restaurant st.louis

Somewhere around this time, I began wishing I had worn sweatpants to dinner. I wasn't sure I could even feel my legs anymore. Still, I wanted more cheese bread.

Our dessert duo were the Green Strawberry and the Rhubarb. The Green Strawberry was our favorite of the two, mostly because it seemed lighter and we had just eaten like 30 other courses. Green strawberry sorbet rested on a light olive oil cake and goat cheese panna cotta, topped with almonds and fresh strawberries. The rhubarb was a normandy tart, stewed rhubarb, Angelica cream, pistachio meringue and pistachio ice cream.

green strawberry Niche Restaurant st.louis

rhubarb Niche Restaurant st. louis

The meal was as memorable as any I've had. The food was impeccable and the service was outstanding. Nothing impresses me more than when a kitchen creates unique and flavorful dishes out of the simplest ingredients, and that's where Niche shines the most. My girlfriend and I also loved that while Niche is certainly a very nice, the feeling inside the restaurant was relaxed and lively. It wasn't nearly silent (like JAAN) and the staff don't talk to you like they're Bruce Wayne's butler.

Niche easily joins Sidney Street Cafe and The Libertine as my St. Louis trifecta of fine food. It's perfect for a romantic evening or a small group dinner. The menu changes almost daily, but the cheese bread is always on there. You must get it.

Niche

7734 Forsyth Blvd

Clayton, MO 63105

314.773.7755

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