The Fountain of Youth Is Violet, Violet

Beeting It for Life

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DISH: Uprooting Beet-ism

It has taken decades for me to discuss pickled beets, and creamed beets, and beets in soup, and simply boiled beets. Maybe I mentioned it in passing when hosting Martha Stewart Living Radio. That’s when beets became a salad bar staple and an overpriced restaurant starter, a something-something with spiced, toasted nuts and just enough goat cheese to be decorative.

But in all of these decades I never really confessed to eating beets as a dietary mainstay. Snacking on jarred pickled beets in the ’70s wasn’t done by anyone I knew, other than those relative weirdos – or weirdo relatives – in our family. (Nor was the after-school run, once we started driving, for the jarred herring in sour cream or wine sauce with onions and refrigerator-section shrimp cocktail, quite the thing. To think how we fought over the onions in the herring and relished those tiny shrimp mixed with horseradish-tomato sauce!)

My sister recently brought up a memory, traumatic for her, and one that nudged at my brain for a little while. A napkin, which she had always thought was thrown by our admittedly mischievous brother, had caught fire from the Shabbat candles on the table. Our quick-thinking mother drowned the budding inferno in the pickled beet juice, the nearest liquid, on the table.

An incredibly picky eater as a child, Jen inexplicably loved pickled beets. She was inconsolable that evening after it was filled with inedible ashes and our mom dumped it into the garbage. After a few days, I remembered: I’m the one who had torched the napkin. For some reason, I thought that if you stretched it out tightly enough over the flame, it wouldn’t catch. It was, for all intents and purposes, a chemistry experiment. Jen was pretty astonished to hear that I was the culprit who ruined her beets.

So no, you didn’t discuss beets, especially when it was made by your Polish grandmother into soup with cabbage and beef bones, or silver-skinned herring, or any other ethnic Jewish food when every other contemporary was downing Cheetos and Tastykakes from the snack drawers of their kitchens.

Now I can finally admit it: I like beets. Some people still don’t. Maybe because they taste a little like dirt. But they can also linger on the palate quite sweetly. Thus the attraction to others. Either way, as inexpensive root vegetables (unless you’re buying them at Costco – see below), they inherently carry a whiff of stigma. In fact, I’m the only one in my entire all-adult household who eats them.

No doubt chefs agree with me, though, about their goodness. They’re so versatile, served hot or cold, shredded (use gloves, guard your counter, check your teeth in the silver of your soup spoon), sliced or whole. They’re an absolute necessity for Eastern European borscht – another soup that suburban New Jersey girls did not discuss in the school cafeteria, for fear of the judgmental glance from contemporaries. The entire plant is edible and the root easily stored for long periods of time.

They’re not quite as simple to grow, depending on where you live. Rabbits absolutely love the tops, a primary reason I’m looking to fence the vegetable garden despite the economics ($1000 fence = $10 of beets). Beet or beetroot history is quite long. They were cultivated by the ancient Greeks but found at archeological sites well before then. Eons ago they resembled carrots, but today, the bulb is commonly rounded with jewel tones from orange to purple. Beets are stacked with nutrients and rumored to promote longevity. Natural Juviderm? Just a thought.

Aside from history and health, beets hold a special place in my heart. They made many appearances on holiday tables but for me, they’re the snack I shared with my sister, sitting at the kitchen table and scraping the last bits from the jar.
BK

DISH: Recipes

It’s difficult to make attractive beet dishes. Chefs know it and we know it. So when I visited Basque restaurant Leku at the Rubell Museum and encountered this stunning tartar de remolacha (beet tartare + olive oil caviar), envisioned by Executive Chef Mikel Goikolea, I knew I had to share. The restaurant itself is just as visionary, airy and stylish, with plenty of socially distanced, outdoor tables that manage to remain cool and shaded even in Miami. Yes, the pandemic has made it difficult to pursue our cultural lives. But here you have an opportunity to feed your belly as well as your imagination by perusing the Rubell family’s extensive and frankly amazing collection of modern art afterward.
(Note: Masks required.)
JK

Refrigerator Pickled Beets

When making this, wear gloves to protect your hands from staining, and be careful of your counters!

7-8 medium beets, washed and tops trimmed off
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt
Option 1: ¼ teaspoon whole cloves and 2 bay leaves to each jar
Option 2: 2 tablespoons thinly sliced white onion and 1 stalk celery, chopped, to each jar
1 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/3 cup water
¼ cup white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon black peppercorns

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Toss beets with oil and salt. Wrap in foil. Roast 40-60 minutes on a baking sheet until a knife can easily pierce through them. Let cool and remove the skin.

While beets are roasting, sterilize 2 pint jars. Add Option 1, Option 2, or both to the pint jars. Slice and divide beets in half. Add beets to the pint jars.

In a saucepot, bring apple cider vinegar, water, kosher salt, and peppercorns to a boil. Cover the beets with the brine. Refrigerate.

Makes 2 pints

Note: You can also add horseradish, dill, or any other seasonings or herbs to the pint jars. Cook’s choice!
BK

Our mom used to make what she called creamed beets, albeit without the cream. I hunted online for an equivalent with cornstarch as the thickener. Harvard beets came the closest with this version from Allrecipes.com. (While you’re there, check out Jen’s most recent article from that site!) It calls for canned beets. But in late summer, fresh beets abound. So I subbed the equivalent amount. It also has butter, which makes it better, but probably didn’t grace our childhood side dish. In fact, our mom says shes used to reduce it with a little orange juice, a natural way to add some citric counterpoint.

Note: Jen says if you’re out of fresh beets, or feeling particularly lazy about cooking them, you can Instacart beets from Costco, or get them yourself, that have been peeled, cooked, and vacuum-packed, four to a bag. Talk about ease of use! Of course, they’re also much more expensive that way. But they’re also pretty great when chopped and topped with a few seeds, nuts, and/or hunks of feta for quick, light lunch or dinner.
BK

TILL: Being Aware of Barware

Every year (until this year, when it was canceled), my husband and some of his college fraternity brothers take a trip together. Which is great, because I get the house to myself – any introverted poet’s dream – and a pretty cool souvenir, as my husband feels guilty. (I can’t imagine why, since one of my pre- and post-COVID gigs is travel writing and I leave him alone all the time. But I look no gift horses in their gift-bag mouths).

Sometimes he brings me regional food. Always a welcome option. Sometimes it’s jewelry. Never a no. But sometimes it’s delayed gratification because, like my son, Jon has a hard time making up his mind.

One year, the men went to New Orleans and found this great shop called Vintage 329. Vintage is my thing and always has been. I especially love Art Deco and Modern Mid-Century (MMC) designs. Jon likes those clean, geometric lines, too. Helpful, since Miami is filled with Deco and MMC.

At Vintage 329, he and his friends went wild over the perfectly preserved Deco and MMC barware from Karl Palda, Dorothy Thorpe, Georges Briard, and others; the photo above came from our friend Michael Champlin, who purchased that particular set. The colors of this glassware are generally fantastic, ranging from golds to acid greens and yellows to royal purples, blues, and reds. And the shapes – roly poly, footed, punch cups with handles – are space-age, at once sharply defined and perfectly fitted to your palm. You can get sets with carafes, pitchers, punch bowls, or even trays.

The choices are extensive, which is why after that trip, my present was a website URL, a metaphorical throwing up of hands, and instructions to choose for myself. But in fact, we already have a collectible set of highball and lowball (rocks) glasses with ombré silver rims, complete with a tray, ice bucket, and two carafes, that looks very much like a Dorothy Thorpe. The only difference is that we got it at a flea market in Newburyport, Massachusetts, thirty years ago for twenty bucks, and these prices… well, let’s just say that Briard, from whom I have too many pieces already according to the recently passed household law called “no one wants to inherit your stuff,” is known for using 22K gold leaf.

Still, I’m looking. I always look.
JK

DISH: Poetry

Instructions for Repasts with a Priest: Wreathed and Un-Wreathed

Allow him to choose the wines,
those fine, heart-healthy vintages of red;
offer bread, the rolls with whole grains,
not the plain white of a collar, for good
colon grades. Keep to upbeat tones;
be Zen; resist the urge to call him “Dad.”

Or, conversation being overrated,
give the cod, flash-fried in a saucepan,
the best lines – jokes like, “the less said,
the butter.” Bleed beets with blue cheese on
the tines of utensils, staining them like wood.
Be foie gras bad, then confess: Father, I have dined.

You can find this and other food poems in Brie Season (Kelsay Books, 2014).
JK