hoorah for beetroot

beetroot is beautiful!

i don't know why, but so many people i know think that beetroot is vile and would never eat it voluntarily. maybe it goes back to school dinners and having no choice but to eat what was on the plate and the juice dyed everything else. maybe it goes back to a lack of imagination in its presentation, i.e., boil the buggers then cut them into cubes. this week, however, it seems to be rather fashionable. i saw this in the guardian:

"Beetroot. The root of the beet. Beta vulgaris. Doesn't exactly resonate with romance, does it? But actually, since Roman times beetroot has been considered a potent aphrodisiac. Murals featuring beetroot have been found on the walls of Pompeii's brothels, and seeds and other traces uncovered in the excavations there (insert your own Vesuvius eruption gag here)."

and the lovely description of how it stains your, well, everything really:

"... it's incredibly versatile and, for those who are recoiling in horror, not nearly as scary as it looks. Well, apart from the Lady Macbeth hand scrubbing moment after you've peeled it."

in fact, for this very reason, beetroot may be used on the seder plate at passover instead of the lamb's bone. originally suggested for those who could not afford any kind of bone, particularly because of the similarity to blood, the beetroot is now a common seder option for vegetarians like myself.

i also found a piece in the same paper a couple of days later talking mainly about how to get children to like beetroot:

" Explain that, if you eat enough of it, beetroot makes everything go purple - even the inside of your tummy. Few children can resist the prospect of producing purple poo."

there are also a couple of recipes here if you skip to the bottom. finally ... o, i get it - the grauniad is teaching us about eating seasonal food, and beets are just starting now ... a bit more info about the vegetable including, for the faint-hearted or messy eater:

"Golden or white beetroot, or the internally striped chioggia variety, are similar in flavour to the purple stuff but don't turn everything purple"

d & i saw shrek 3 friday afternoon. v. silly and much fun. afterwards at the omega diner, they brought beetroot along with the bread while we were ordering. i realised that there was an important ingredient missing - cloves. that is how my mother and grandmother always do/did beetroot and, while as a child it was awful if you accidentally bit a clove, it still tastes better if you bung a few in.