The Beet Generation

The beet is the most intense of vegetables,” begins Tom Robbins’ novel “Jitterbug Perfume.” It is “the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried . . . the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma.” So fundamental, so everlasting are beets that Robbins ascribes to them properties of immortality. Perhaps this is why in the new millennium, we are at last becoming a nation of beet-eaters.

Yes, beets are hot. Not just Robbins’ river-of-life orbs, but a polychromatic riot of roots whose reds and golds mingle with blood oranges and blaze across our city like a culinary comet. Beets are flashy, assertive. Even their Latin name, Beta vulgaris, betrays them, conjuring up a rude guest demanding attention, testing our appreciation for strong flavors and earthy aromas.

Right now, farmers market stalls overflow with great bunches of late spring beets: orange-shouldered Burpee’s Goldens, whose sunny disposition overcomes pungent base notes; the most popular hybrid, Red Ace, with tender, red-veined tops; Bulls Blood, whose pigment saturates its matching burgundy leaves; yellow mangels, so sweet that old Major in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” exhorts his barnyard companions to revolution with their promise. Let’s not forget the elusive albino white beet, or Italian chioggias (kee-OJ-yahs), their beach umbrella-stripe interiors hidden under a rosy cloak. (Only the flamboyant Venetians would think to celebrate this old variety named for a nearby seaside town.)

Chioggias illustrate a difference in mind-sets between Americans and Italians when it comes to this vegetable. We breed beets for color uniformity in the concentric rings of beet flesh. Italians embrace variety. Gather an armload of beets, expose their splendor, and you have a color-pulsating op-art piece reminiscent of Vasarely.

Yet for all their virtues, beets remained on the sidelines in America, until now. We cared little for Russian and Polish borscht, Swedish pickled beets, ravioli di barbabietole, Moroccan-style with yogurt, beetroot on a New Zealand burger, or even our own sweet-sour Harvard beets.

“Eight years ago, all we had were red beets,” recalls Josiah Citrin, chef-owner of Melisse restaurant in Santa Monica. “I used to make a roasted beet salad with a walnut-sherry vinaigrette at Jackson’s. At first no one would touch it, then it became incredibly popular.” Lobster with roasted chioggia beets, beet juice and asparagus is a Melisse signature dish, and Citrin joins roasted white beets with duck and figs.

Irwin Goldman, a beet specialist and associate professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, hopes the new passion for beets stems from an understanding of the vegetable’s “great truth: its flavor connects us to the earth.”

Beets were cultivated for their greens in Roman times, much as chard, their sibling, still is. By the 16th century, multihued garden beets and mangel-wurzel (fodder beets) were being grown for their root size and winter storage longevity. Beets’ high sucrose levels made them a good sugar substitute during the Napoleonic Wars, when sugar cane supplies were cut off, and gave rise to the modern sugar beet.

Today, farmers, chefs and seed companies attribute the vegetable’s growing popularity to a symbiosis between farmers markets and restaurants: Chefs spot a new variety and ask small farmers to grow it, and home cooks and gardeners then follow suit. “It’s a grass-roots movement, like the salad mix revolution,” says John Navazio, senior plant breeder at Alf Christianson Seed Co. in Washington state, a major beet seed producer. Yet while mesclun has become ubiquitous in salad mixes, speciality beets are still mainly the provenance of fresh markets.

Lucques chef Suzanne Goin fell in love with beets’ earthiness 10 years ago when cooking at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Lucques now features multicolored roasted beets and greens topped with cannelloni that’s filled with ricotta, mascarpone and goat cheese.

It’s fairly easy for farmers to accommodate the higher demand. Beets favor mild sunny days and cool nights, meaning California has two seasons for the vegetable--late spring-early summer and fall, when sugars and colors are more concentrated. Maryann and Paul Carpenter, owners of Coastal Organics farm in Camarillo, raised production by planting their red, white and golden beets more frequently. James Birch, owner of organic Flora Bella Farms in Three Rivers, has increased his yields of red, golden, mangel, white and striped beets to two acres total, while Paul Thurston, manager of McGrath Family Farms in Camarillo, has increased his supply of red, goldens and chioggias by half in the last three years.

Despite the increase in planting, table beets take up just 6,000 to 10,000 acres nationally, which may have to do with their idiosyncrasies. There are those among us who insist beets taste like dirt. “What kills beets for some people is the presence of the flavor component geosmin, which is also manufactured by microbes present in soil,” Navazio says. Geosmin levels may increase if beets are stored poorly. “That’s why farmers markets are a good place to be re-introduced to beets,” he says.

For beet-phobics, there’s an easy way in: Start with the greens. Beet tops are milder, and they are richer in folic acid and vitamins A and C. “We used to hack off the tops, but no more,” Maryann Carpenter says. “I convince my customers to try them sauteed with garlic in olive oil.” Bettina Birch blanches them whole, then chops them in half and fills them with feta cheese, grilling or baking them until the cheese metlts. (Any chef worth his or her fleur de sel today serves a beet greens side dish.)

Once you’ve begun to enjoy the greens, tackle the root. Often the reds have a stronger mineral taste, the goldens, mangels and whites a sweet and mild one, and chioggias a sweet-tart bite.

Like other earthbound foods, beets marry well with citrus. Just as lemon brightens wild mushrooms, sweet-tart oranges temper and highlight a beet’s flavor. At Campanile, chef Mark Peel roasts beets to intensify sweetness and tosses them with seasonal blood oranges and toasted walnuts. Flavor balance is about fundamentals--sweet, salt, sour, bitter--and Peel also pairs beets with bitter-hot horseradish vinaigrette. At Zax, chef Brooke Williamson combines beets with tangerines and ricotta salata. At Chadwick, chef /owner Ben Ford and co-chef Govind Armstrong make a summer dish of roasted baby beets, boucheron and toasted hazelnuts.

With beets rescued from salad bar-oblivion, we arrive at the heart of the matter. Consider the beet’s primal greatness--seriousness, insouciance, sweet sensuousness, permanence (ever try to wash out beet juice?), and phytonutrient claims to health. There are only three ingredients in Tom Robbins’ immortal elixir: citrus, beet pollen and jasmine. Think about that the next time you order a beet-and-orange salad.

Claud Beltran, Cayo, Pasadena

Red, yellow and striped beet salad with caramelized goat cheese and fresh herb sauce

serves 4

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Roasted Beets

2 pounds yellow beets

2 pounds red beets

2 pounds striped beets

1 bunch fresh thyme

9 garlic cloves

3 tablespoons butter

4 ounces goat cheese

Mixed salad greens

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sauce

1/2 bunch Italian parsley

1/2 bunch fresh dill

1/2 bunch fresh cilantro

1/2 bunch fresh chives

1/2 cup canola oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

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Wash beets and cut off stems and root ends. To roast the beets, place each color in its own foil packet, add a third of thyme and three garlic cloves (pressed), salt, white pepper and 1 tablespoon butter to each packet. Place all three bundles on a baking sheet and roast in a 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes, then check for doneness by carefully opening foil and piercing beet with knife. When beets are done you can feel a slight resistance. Depending on size, they should take up to an hour to cook. Let cool and peel. Place beets in separate bowls so they won’t color each other.

To make sauce, pick herbs free from their stems and blanch in boiling pot of water with plenty of salt for about 1 minute. Drain in colander and place in a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. Drain and place in blender with 4-5 ice cubes. Blend slowly, adding canola oil and vinegar until mixture has creamy consistency. Season with kosher salt and black pepper.

Slice beets into rounds and divide between four plates. Sprinkle with good quality extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. Place a few leaves of mixed salad greens on top. Slice goat cheese with hot knife and liberally sprinkle with sugar. Place goat cheese slices onto salad greens and with a culinary torch melt sugar to golden brown resembling creme brulee. If you do not have a torch, place slices on foil-lined baking sheet and place under broiler for a couple of minutes. Drizzle sauce over beets and around the plate.

Suzanne Goin, Lucques, West Hollywood

Cheese cannelloni with roasted beets, sage and hazelnuts

serves 6

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12 small baby carrots

12 red beets

12 golden beets

12 shallots, caramelized

7 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon sugar

41/2 cups of baby spinach or beet greens

1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts, chopped

2 tablespoons toasted bread crumbs

2 tablespoons amaretti cookie crumbs

2 tablespoons aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated

11/2 cups of vegetable stock

6 tablespoons butter

3 teaspoons chopped sage

12 4-inch squares fresh pasta (recipe follows)

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cannelloni filling

3/4 cup ricotta cheese

1/2 cup goat cheese

1/4 cup mascarpone cheese

1 tablespoon diced shallots

2 teaspoons chopped thyme leaves

1/4 tablespoon of olive oil

1 egg yolk

1 cup sauteed spinach, squeezed dry and chopped

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Place carrots on a piece of foil and drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Seal and roast in 350-degree oven for 12-15 minutes until tender. Cut in half when cool. Place red and golden beets on separate pieces of foil, drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil on each, sprinkle with salt and pepper and fold foil. Roast in 350-degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, until knife tender. Peel and cut into quarters when cool. To caramelize shallots, heat a medium saute pan and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add peeled shallots and sprinkle with half teaspoon sugar. Cook about 20 minutes on low to medium heat until they reach a caramel brown.

To make filling, saute shallots in olive oil for about 3-4 minutes. Let cool. Combine remaining ingredients, except for cooked spinach, in bowl. Set aside.

Next make pasta. Fill large pot with salted water and bring to boil. Cook a few pieces of pasta at a time for about 20 seconds. Remove with slotted spoon and lay on flat work surface to cool. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of cheese filling onto edge of pasta. Place half tablespoon of cooked spinach next to filling. Carefully roll pasta over filling and tuck seam side down.

Place cannelloni on oiled cookie sheet. Sprinkle on Parmigiano-Reggiano. Cook in 400-degree oven until cheese turns a golden brown, about 10-15 minutes.

While cannelloni is in oven, heat a small saute pan and add the butter. Cook on low heat until the melted butter is a golden brown, then remove from heat. Add hazelnuts, sage and salt and pepper to taste.

Heat a large saute pan and add 2 tablespoons olive oil. Place carrots, beets and caramelized shallots in pan and saute for 2-3 minutes or until hot. Add spinach and vegetable stock and season with salt and pepper. Cook until spinach is wilted.

Divide roasted carrot and beets mixture into six separate bowls. Place 2 cannelloni on top of each mixture. Spoon brown butter over each cannelloni, making sure that hazelnuts and sage are divided equally. Sprinkle each with toasted bread crumbs and amaretti crumbs.

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pasta recipe:

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 whole eggs

3 egg yolks

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Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Make a well, add eggs. With fork, stir eggs into flour. Mix until dough begins to form. Knead dough until smooth and elastic, about 10-15 minutes. Cut dough in half and place through pasta machine at widest setting, which should be No. 1. Continue putting pasta through higher settings, once each, until you reach No. 5 . Repeat with second half of dough. Cut pasta into 4-inch squares.

Mark Peel, Campanile, Los Angeles

Roasted beet salad with horseradish vinaigrette

serves 6

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salad

2 pounds assorted red, gold and chiogga beets

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

2 teaspoons thyme leaves removed from stems and chopped

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup walnut halves, lightly toasted

1/4 cup fresh chives, finely minced

1/2 cup mache, arugula, watercress or other greens, for garnish

12 thin slices of prosciutto di Parma (1 ounce each)

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horseradish vinaigrette

3 ounces horseradish root

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

2-4 tablespoons prepared white horseradish (optional)

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To make salad, wash beets and trim ends. Place beets, one color at a time, in mixing bowl and toss with kosher salt, black pepper, thyme and olive oil. Place beets, keeping each color separate, in single layer in foil-lined baking pans. Cover pans with aluminum foil and roast at 400 degrees for about 1 hour. Uncover and roast about 10 minutes longer, or until beets are tender. When beets are cool, remove skins. Cut into 4 to 6 wedges and transfer to bowls, with colors separated.

Set aside walnut halves that have stayed intact. Slice remaining walnuts and combine with intact halves.

To make vinaigrette, wash horseradish and use vegetable peeler to remove outer brown skin. Using shredder attachment, shred horseradish in a food processor, then use metal blade attachment to finely mince. This should yield about 1/2 cup. In medium mixing bowl, combine fresh horseradish, vegetable oil, vinegar and black pepper, adding prepared horseradish to taste if desired. Mix vinaigrette well and reserve.

Toss each color of beet separately with walnuts and vinaigrette. Season with kosher salt and black pepper.

Mound beets in center of large platter. Sprinkle with chives and surround with slices of prosciutto and leaves of mache or greens of your choice. Serve immediately.