Last night, I had dinner with my friend Jacqui, someone I first met through an editorial internship three years ago, but later came to know through our food blogs (started on the exact same day last August, would you believe it?) and who inspires me, with simple-enough-for-me-to-try fried green tomatoes and stories about her family that give me chills right in the middle of my day and, lately, stories about beets, the purple root vegetable I have never, ever before tried or bought or held, even, but found a bunch of in my Saturday CSA box.
And while Jacqui regularly amazes me with phrases like, But I don’t have a baking sheet, or We don’t keep sugar in the apartment, or Could I bake that in a casserole dish instead?, she also possesses an attitude toward vegetables—and all food, really—that is as open-minded and I-will-try-that-too as I could ever hope to be, without making me feel silly for ordering something called a chicken puff at the Thai restaurant she took me to, after I asked her things like, What is Pad Thai? and How do you make fried rice?
So anyway, when I saw her recipe for beets Sunday, luring me with likenings of beets to jewels or lipstick kisses, I felt less terrified of the purple beasts inside my box, more empowered. I knew what I would do.
And after scrubbing, trimming and placing the beets in my Lucy Le Creuset with a little water at the bottom, I stuck the whole thing in the oven for about 45 minutes, later pulling them out, draining, cooling and then wiping away their skin with my plastic-gloved fingers. Everything she said was right, from the way the gnarly exterior gives way to something shiny and glistening to the way they taste, eaten just plain, like the earth they came from.
Seeing as this was the first time I had ever had a beet, I tried very hard to discern their flavor or texture: like you’d expect of a vegetable, hearty, smooth, slightly sweet, almost like a cooked carrot. While I wouldn’t say it was love at first bite, I do think we’re on to something, beets and me, and we’ll have a lifetime to get the kinks worked out.
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