recipe: MADRAS MASH (BEET IS THE NEW BLACK)

Beta vulgaris.
I only know one other person (disclaimer:"alive") who LOVES beets—and by this I mean feels true ardor toward them.

I don’t think you can get away with professing casual love here, tossing off shammy beet accolades which can only sound flimsy and rubbery, suspicious & unsatisying as an old carrot.

You must mean it.

A candid love of beets is exactly like expressing a trembling weakness for canasta, wingtips, an actual preference for the first row in the movie theater, Cleveland. It’s just hopeless.

It’s not that people don’t believe you love beets--they sense the veracity of the claim--but not feeling it themselves they simply can't place the urgency, and that’s really nobody’s fault, least of all the beet's.

Beets suffer (as all things do) from a perilous food irony, in this case sliding neatly into a catalogue of items observed to be “just so wrong, they’re right.” Michael Ruhlman's hair illustrates the phenomenon nicely.

Beets have their own lore, and it would be fair to call it folklore, since any discussion of beets, particularly pickled, necessitates the use of terms like "folks." Most people know or could predict that “beets are good for your blood," and here lies the problem. The marketing is all wrong. The previous remark asserts that beets are good for you, but that the act of consuming them is really only offset by some medical angle, akin to the benefits of being bled by leeches, or applying maggots to third degree burns.

Why offer a dish where the central characteristic is not taste, but some sort of trudging virtue? We should never start a meal with an apology--this I rob and believe of Julia Child.

Syndicated BEET TV, a glimpse:

[a Tuesday, 6 pm. Blue-striped crockery full of boiled beets hits the farm table]:

THUD.

[Eight pairs of weary eyes look on, at various heights, blinking into the cook's explanation, which hangs in the air like a bad ham]

"Beets are good for your blood."

[Stained apron tails turn and exit quickly, inadvertantly wafting a pickled scent into the collective sigh.]

This is all wrong. It puts the eater in a terrible position, like having to decide whether or not to breathe when someone in a stopped elevator or sealed space shuttle compartment says, "Wanna smell something really bad?"

If the beet's image is so poor, I blame beet journalism, all of which takes this apologetic (yet some would argue reverse-elitist) approach: that everyone hates beets but the lone beet-lover writing about them, who is mysteriously attuned to their true beauty.

Do I really have to say, "Stop beating up on beets?"--especially the beet lovers, who are worst of all and do the beet no favors by perpetuating its perceived shortcomings.

What does it say when we offer "A beet recipe you won’t be ashamed to serve!" (see, right there, some editor let go by a perfectly good opportunity to switch out "ashamed" for beet-red"--another tuber tipping point and chance for much-needed beet levity, gone).

I agree that some things are an acquired taste and are worthy of public encouragement, but the minute you start billing something as "hopelessly flawed, but with hidden perks on the backside if you just stay with it" you are dead in the water. I know. I feed toddlers. Even larger people can't think that long-term. You might as well try to sell them a side of our government's infrastructure, while you have out your order book and the complimentary drinks they'll wind up being billed for anyway are en route.

If you require documentation, please check out the beet support group thread on CHOW ("HELP! I am trying to like beets, but struggling!") Huh? How are people “struggling” with beets?-- I don't know, but they do seem to be. Apparently the world is divided jaggedly into beet-haters, beet-strugglers (which is, I think, admirably pitiable), and this ragtag bunch of beet-lovers, myself included.

Or IS IT?--that unevenly divided, I mean? Isn't it just possible this is some great gastronomical hoax? That NO ONE actually hates beets? That it's only something life-long they've convinced themselves of, like being unlucky in love, shin splints or the 16th century theory of bodily humours? OR, is Beet Badness a myth happily perpetuated by the loving population in a clever attempt to hoard all resources for itself and keep demand artificially low? For surely, there must be, there IS, a hidden Cult of the Beet.

I need to find these people.

The well-trod phrase “turned beet red” occurs to me now--a bodily experience we're all loathe to recall but can in an instant: the dreaded embarrassment of recalling embarrassment. But it is part of the annals of humanity, like helping someone move a piano and being dumped. More clues that beet appreciation might be more universal than previously thought, but less likely to be admitted to or brought up in daily conversation.

Let’s face it, they aren't a sizzling topic, and there is no obvious glamour in beets, which I feel is just shameful. My sister recently suggested that beets remind her of Padma Lakshmi, for which I only now forgive her (my absolute devotion to Salman Rushdie on any slight, real or imaginary, being well-documented), and that she could be the spokesperson to turn this thing around. Topping a burger with pickled beet is the fashion in New Zealand and Australia, so perhaps if we could get Padma to hike up her skirts for Hardee's once more and waggle one of these sandwiches in front of her crotch, beets would be in business, or at least experience a stiff esteem hike in the male population. Beets in black fishnet stockings, anyone?

Personally, I don't want that, on a number of levels. I find beets quietly glamorous without being vulgar (despite the Latin), or depressingly unattainable for the average American woman, which is comforting. They're a lusty red, and shapely--a comely, slightly dirty vegetable if ever there was one, and they’re overwhelmingly, naturally sweet but not cloying (sorry, Padma: FAIL), which is frankly very hard to pull off and should be applauded for the uncontrived feat it is, if nothing else.

By now you realize that by "beets" I do mean the lowly garden beet, the tuber, not the sugar beet first cultivated by the Germans, out of which they suck common table sugar, or the red carpet stunner, chard, with its enviably gorgeous mid-ribs (indeed a card-carrying member of beta vulgaris, no matter how far from its Norma Jeane Baker roots it would like to get). Spinach beet is cultivated for its beautiful leaves, but is still nursing a hurt over being passed over early in history by the introduction of common spinach...

So, let me beet you to the punch and say, "ENOUGH of this thinking. Where the hell is this recipe??"

Please believe me when I tell you that the following “recipe” (if you can call it that) for what I am calling Madras Mash was so damn good, that I watched a pot holder go up in flames, with some casual fork-to-mouth disinterest, while I surrepetitiously dug at bites of it before the Madras Mash or the rest of the dinner EVER hit the table.

This has only happened a few times in my life, where I threw together something and then almost had to sit down hard on the floor it was so good, and where I saw and heard myself from above and just knew that the resulting moaning was so obscene that it would never fly on my imaginary show at the Food Network. I think PBS could do something with that in editing.

The colors were phenomenal (and I'm so sorry my gloomy photography would contradict this), the tastes were explosive. It was striking, it was simple, it was beet poetry.

It will serve a family of four, if your family is inclined and if it makes it that far. I’m not arrogant; I don’t think my recipe is inspired--only the ingredients--but I will tell you that I could not stop until it was gone—a beet binge! I knew that what I was doing was too much of a good thing, was in fact "so right it was wrong," and I could not stop myself from going back to the bowl.

Recipe: Madras Mash

-2 largish (what is the beet standard?) fresh beets*, about regulation girls' softball size, scrubbed, peeled and chopped roughly. Don’t do this in white, or if you have a gig as a hand model within the day. Expect to be stained immediately and thoroughly or wear sissypants gloves.

-4 sweet potatoes, the size of stadium-calibur, complimentary nerf footballs—Hey! Cleveland Browns colors!

-Olive oil to coat the beets and potatoes

-Melted ghee…you decide (about 6 T?) You can use regular butter, but I’m addicted to ghee for its coating vs. drowning goodness.

-Sea salt. I like French Grey Salt, but that of course sounds pretentious.

-Orange zest, directly proportional to your enthusiasm for the project.

-juice of 1/2-1 orange. A blood-orange is nice, but uneccessary, and I would save its color for a dish that really could use some color.

-Roast the beets and sweets potatoes with the olive oil “in a bad marriage” (tossed and turned [with the oil] for a loooong time, in separate beds[pans]). Get them fork-tender, but with a slight pleasing resistance.

-Mash each pan of vegetables separately, then combine, folding the beets into the sweet potatoes, until they are just blended, but still distinct, like....a madras plaid.

-Drizzle with melted ghee and orange juice, whallop with sea salt and the orange zest, then fold again, carefully.

*A jarred beet is not, no-way, no-how, the same, but I will still always rather, than abstain, and if you liken the jarred variety to pity sex I think you will see I am only human and come around to my feelings on the non-fresh beet.

**Music to mash by: The Beat Goes On, from Sonny & Cher's brilliantly titled album In Case You Find yourself In Love.

I swear on my life that I ate it all, with my three year-old’s free-gift-with-subscription Animal Baby fork--though I strongly suspected this utensil contains melamine (and also there was no time for expensive third-party lead testing)--because I HAD TO. Because that was all I came up with, blindly rooting around (rooting around! Who was it that said beets aren’t hysterical!?) in the drawer at pelvis-height, as I kept my eyes riveted on the bowl.

Some foods do force a guttural, primevial reaction from a person. I have read that people always say “oh my God” during coitus, because, well if there’s ever a time where you have proof-of-existence it’s then, and I am thinking this is the same. The Romans considered beetroot juice an aphrodisiac, but it seems like they were always looking for an excuse to pull down their pants. According to Wikipedia, "Field Marshal Montgomery is reputed to have exhorted his troops to 'take favours in the beetroot fields', a euphemism for visiting prostitutes" so I feel like I am right on track with my thinking.
If you want to enter the root vegetable deity-carving and/or body part contest I am sponsoring, please drop me a line.

Though there is almost nothing corporeal I won’t discuss here, please turn your head and cough as we attend to something very important, which as far as I can tell isn’t getting much coverage at CHOW and I’m pretty sure Thomas Keller might ignore entirely: The other thing no one tells you about beets. Actually, I should call this section “The Number 2 Thing No One Tells You About Beets.” It may be the quantity of fresh beets I consumed, but I had a moment of pure panic, even days later, certain I was experiencing a massive gastric bleed. Like many things, chiefly childbirth, you cannot prepare yourself...but be prepared anyway. No amount of intellectual understanding will help you, but it will be strangely comforting after the fact to say to yourself “Come on, lighten up—YOU KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.” I felt it would be unethical to omit this, though also I felt it equally important to keep it out of the recipe.

Wikipedia does say this: "The consumption of beets are known to cause pink urine, but is very healthy for the immune system." I told you, with beets there is always the offset, always the apology. In case you're wondering, this condition is called beeturia, a name I like for its honesty and economy, and will certainly be the name of my next garage band.

Hey--did you feel like we were On The Road To Wellville for a little while there, too?

So, beets are UNCOOL. I think, though, that they are on their way to becoming REALLY cool (and certainly with this endorsement, how could they not) and are no doubt headed for a price hike. Beets are so tragically unhip that they garner hosility and provoke fear--WOW. Simple concepts like smiling at people, sharing and community gardens do that.

Enter The New Cult of The Beet. The New Old Cult of The Beet. It's just time. Beet is the new black.

...Of course, I see them on the menu at Woodberry Kitchen, and will give you a full report next week. On the...(I won't say it).