Roasted Beets With Crispy Sunchokes and Pickled Orange-Ginger Purée

This dish is an exercise in contrasting textures and flavors. Roasted beets are not that interesting to eat by themselves, so I put them atop a bed of citrusy pickled ginger puree, which is pungent, acidic, and sweet. The combination of beets and ginger gives you a great spectrum of flavors, but there’s not much texture to be had, so I top them with crunchy toasted cashews and a mess of crispy sunchoke chips, a crunchy topping you can also use to add an earthy crunch to a salad, soup, pasta, or vegetable dish. Lastly, some chopped orange segments sprinkled over the dish add little explosions of sweet acidity.