Beets
It was Tom Robbins who first made me love the beet.
Dad used to serve beets in tribute to his crimson alma mater, and though I was
attracted to their infectious hue, I didn’t enjoy eating them until I read
“Jitterbug Perfume.”
I
quote:
“The beet is the most intense
of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the
radish is a cold fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough,
yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly
serious.
The beet is the murderer
returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry
finishes with the carrot. The beet was Rasputin’s favorite vegetable. You
could see it in his eyes.
An old
Ukrainian proverb warns, ‘A tale that begins with a beet will end with the
devil.’ That is a risk we will have to
take.”
Admit it - now you want to
eat a beet. You want to taste the taste of deadly serious. Even Jacob was
intrigued; he, who due to his unfortunate former experience with pickled beets,
had threatened (jokingly?) to pelt them at our new upholstery when I brought
them home. There’s that pesky aversion to the sweet vegetable perking up
again.
Beets are indeed notable for their
sweetness - they have the highest sugar content of any vegetable, but they are
very low in calories. Fresh beets are high in folic acid and potassium, and
their greens are an excellent source of beta-carotene, calcium, and iron.
They're known for their healing ability to purify the blood and the liver. In
ancient civilizations, only the green leaves of the beet plant were eaten; the
roots, which did not look like modern beets, were used medicinally to treat
headaches and toothaches. Beets as we know them, with large rounded roots, were
probably developed in the sixteenth century, though it took another 200 years
before they gained any popularity as a
food.
Though I do love a straight beet,
roasted or boiled, I was in the mood to try something more exotic, more in
keeping with the beet of the passage above. Dinner last night thus became baby
beet and ginger risotto with pan roasted wasabi salmon
filets.
Brace yourself - this is one of
the most dramatic and luxurious dishes you will ever lay eyes on. In the
risotto, roasted beets are blended into an inky beet broth which flavors and
stains the rice. Bits of beet also are added, after the rice has been perfumed
with garlic, shallots, and fresh minced
ginger.
For the salmon, filets are rubbed
with salt, pepper and wasabi powder, quickly seared in a hot pan, then allowed,
just barely, to cook through.
On the
plate, the pink-orange salmon is placed atop a pool of blood-red risotto. I
longed for a few sprigs of green onion to scatter on top, but even without it
looked fabulous. The rice literally oozes velvet color, so saturated that the
salmon seems to pale in its presence. If I make it again, I may try a glaze on
the filets so that they can stand up visually to the richness and depth of the
beets. Wish me luck.
For all its
aesthetic density, the meal was surprisingly fresh - not exactly light, but not
heavy either. The clean bright ginger played well with the musky beets, setting
off the natural sweetness of the salmon. Rasputin would have been
proud.
Posted: Fri - January 9, 2004 at 10:25 AM