Ode to Beets

Beets are best roasted, but I steamed them this time around since I wanted to hardsteam some eggs at the same time.

Fresh beets come with large leaves which I find delicious. Raw they have a strong, salty flavor; I made sure to taste a bit before cooking the rest for the recipe given here. I lopped the leaves into manageable pieces and sauteed them in butter, plus a little red wine on a whim, to eat over pasta (full-bodied whole wheat spaghettini) with parmesan cheese. Thick, fibrous red ribs run down the center of the leaves--I should have cut those smaller or cooked them longer than the green parts, otherwise they present a chewing challenge. The red and green over brown-dyed-red pasta results in dramatic presentation. I accompanied this with the root part of the beet, which in retrospect I think would have been nice drizzled with a white sweet cream thing, maybe creme fraiche or ricotta mixed with a little sour cream for oomph.

I was hardsteaming the eggs to go into a potato salad I was making for lunch the next day. Potato salad is by nature vegetarian and there are a million ways to make it. Inspired by Jose's salads, I cooked carrots along with the potatoes this time (also because I had only one potato) and that came out good. Of the selection of salty things one can add (olives, capers, relish) I used only olives this time around. Turns out I had leftover beets to eat with the potato salad today, and they made a good match--I mused that one could make a potato-salad-esque thing with beets as a base, and then realized that maybe I'd eaten something like that before, and forgotten.

With beets, be warned: red gets everywhere--in the kitchen, and in your system! I asked Arvind, from India, about a rumor I'd heard that hardcore Jain people who wouldn't eat beets because they're just too "bloody," but he didn't think it was true.