Easy beets with lentils and tahini-yoghurt
A sneak peek recipe from LINGER and reflections on my Australian book tour
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. ‘ Find archived recipes on my recipe index.
Back this week after an unplanned break (jet lag, time zones and touring exhaustion got the better of me). Enjoy this little recap of my trip home for my Australian book tour with a peak at an easy, no-cook, maximum reward salad from LINGER.
I don’t always find it easy returning home to Sydney. There is a lot of emotional (and physical) baggage associated with a homecoming. There are expectations, actual and conjured. There is a need to balance the comforts with the discomforts.
Part of it is alienation. But this displacement is not reserved for when I return to Sydney. Rather, it is part of my personality now, no matter where I am in the world. I feel it when I’m in New York too.
When a person leaves and comes back, they return as a different person, changed by lived experiences. That change is absorbed and metabolized in every part of their lives. Separation need not be a negative feeling though. It can be harnessed for growth too.
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There were a lot of these feelings during my brief visit to Sydney (and Melbourne) last week to launch my new book Linger. Mostly good feelings, too. My home city felt less alien to me, and I felt less like an alien being there. Truthfully, I loved being home.
While I was in town, there were some really memorable, heart-filling moments. I shared Linger launch day with my two hilarious pals Jennifer Wong and Benjamin Law at my favourite Sydney bookstore Kinokuniya. Ben or Jen (can’t remember who) mentioned that it is not often you get 3 Cantonese people in front of a large audience in Australia. I immediately realized how important it is for people like us to show up and speak up. Not for representation, but to normalize the sight of 3 Cantonese people in front of a large audience in Australia. We should not be the exception. We should be the norm. That was a great night. (note: five days later, there was anti immigration rallies across cities in Australia. It felt sobering, and exhausting, to see this, and it made me feel like our work is not done, not even close. It also made me feel like our work, and our individual and unique stories, are more vital than ever. Thank you to my incredible community who are examples of good people, please pay it forward in your own communities, offering the same generosity and kindness to those around you. Single acts of kindness are often more powerful than mass displays of ignorance and hate).
In Melbourne, I was honoured to be interviewed by the incredible Besha Rodell with Readings (where Linger is currently a Bestseller! 🙏🏼). We had never met, and had no contact before the event (my choice, as I like to go into author talks blind, so I am able to give the most authentic answers and thoughts), but the conversation felt so familiar and she deftly created a safe space for me to answer each thoughtful question in the most authentic way possible. Besha, who spent a lot of her life in the USA, is a kindred spirit, who understands what it feels like to be from somewhere else, to sound like you’re from somewhere else, to eat like you’re from somewhere else and to cook like you’re from somewhere else. So many of these themes are featured in Linger. We had a great conversation. Thank you Besha (she has a new memoir out about her life as a restaurant critic, I’m excited to read it)
I also had a lot of special conversations with home cooks after my talks. There was 16 year old Cecilia who asked my advice on how to break into a career in food. And then there was Lindsy in Melbourne, an American living in Australia, told me that my recipes reminded her of America. That felt like a full circle moment.
Thank you to everyone who came to my events in Australia. I flew a long way to reconnect with you all and it was all worth it!
On the day before launch day, I was on morning TV cooking up my Easy Beets with lentils and tahini-yoghurt. It was a perfect recipe to demo on TV because there is no cooking-with-heat involved and relies on supermarket staples. It is also so simple, more assembly than cooking, but the finished dish is one that wows. The host Kylie Gillies (who says she doesn’t cook much) loved it so much, she went home and made it for dinner. Today, I’m sharing this recipe, a little sneak peek at Linger for global audiences.
WE ARE ONE MONTH AWAY FROM LINGER USA AND THE WORLD!
If you are interested in the US preorder bonus (it’s so cute!), you only have about 2 more weeks to get your preorder in to qualify for this bonus! Preorder from any of the stores below and you’ll get a signed print of MISS SALAD!
This offer is available to US residents only. The free print is unframed.
Book Larder / Now Serving / Kitchen Arts and Letters / Archestratus / Bold Fork Books / Vivienne Culinary / Read It & Eat / Omnivore Books on Food / Binding Agents (local pickup in Philly only)
New recipes this week, featuring lots of tomatoes (all NYT Cooking recipes have gift links):
Tomato and Burrata Salad With Chile Crisp
Sheet-Pan Ravioli With Burst Tomatoes
Vegetarian Tomato Mapo Tofu
Zucchini Butter Pasta
Hokkien mee: Vegan Hokkien noodles with mushrooms and tofu
Easy Beets and Lentils with Tahini-Yogurt and Candied Nuts
© Recipe excerpted from Linger, Salads, Sweets and Stories to Savor by Hetty Lui McKinnon (Pan Macmillan/Plum Books, AA Knopf/Knopf Cooks 2025) for To Vegetables, With Love.
Two supermarket staples—canned lentils and precooked beets—come together to create this vibrant no-cook salad. Precooked beets, sold in vacuum packs at the supermarket, deserve more love. They are an excellent ingredient to have on hand in the fridge for weeknight cooking. With precooked beets, you can have a smoothie in seconds, a dip in minutes and a salad in just a few moments more. Here, I’ve pickled them and then added them to hearty lentils for a dish that is textural and bright—the tart beets are deftly balanced by the creamy tahini-yogurt. The beets need only an hour to take on the pickling flavor, but you could leave them overnight in the fridge for more intensity.
A note: the candied nuts referred to in the recipe are in LINGER. You can use any toasted nuts or seeds here, anything for a textural crunch.
SERVES 4
Vegan / Gluten free
2 (15.5- ounce/440g) cans lentils, drained and rinsed
Handful of fresh dill or mint (or both), finely chopped
Sea salt and black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup Candied Any- Nuts (recipe in LINGER) or toasted nuts
Pickled Beets
1/2 cup (120ml) apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup (50g) sugar
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
5 whole black or white peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 pound (450g) cooked beets, cut into thick wedges, halved or quartered (depending on their size)
1 shallot, halved and finely sliced
Tahini-Yogurt
3/4 cup (180g) coconut or whole- milk Greek yogurt
1/3 cup (80g) tahini
1 garlic clove, grated
Sea salt and black pepper
Substitutions
• Lentils: chickpeas, quinoa or black- eyed peas • Apple cider vinegar: red or white wine vinegar • Candied nuts: toasted nuts or dukkah
Make the pickled beets: In a medium ceramic bowl, place the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, peppercorns and salt and whisk to dissolve the sugar. Add the beets and shallot and toss to combine. Set aside for at least 1 hour, or store in an airtight container in the fridge overnight. Drain before using.
Make the tahini-yogurt: In a small bowl, place the yogurt, tahini and garlic and whisk to combine. Add2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and whisk until the mixture is thick but spreadable (if it is too thick, add a little more water). Season with salt and lots of pepper. In a medium bowl, place the drained pickled beets, the shallot, lentils and three-quarters of the dill. Toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle generously with olive oil. Toss again.
Spread the tahini yogurt onto a serving plate, top with the beets and lentils and finish with the candied nuts and remaining dill.
PREP AHEAD: The beets can be pickled and stored in a clean, sterilized jar in the fridge for several months.
NOTE: To cook fresh beets, place 4 medium (1 pound/450g) scrubbed clean and trimmed beets into a stainless-steel pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the beets are tender all the way through, 25 to 40 minutes (test by piercing with a skewer or fork). Drain and allow to cool. Peel the beets and cut into wedges.
Love the combo of beets and lentils! So earthy and perfect for fall. I'll definitely be trying this but with home-cooked beets :)
you had me at easy beets and then noooo surprise - tahini yogurt !!