You can't beetaroot.

This post is dedicated to Wayne - who on hearing what I was cooking, supplied the title of the post. Thank you Wayne. For my American friends who read this blog - a "root" is a delightful colloquialism for sexual intercourse in Australia. So you see the post title is a kind of sophisticated reworking of the word beetroot.

It should be noted that this post differs vastly from all my previous posts in that I have included obvious lowest common denominator ribaldry and because it is about a vegetable.

GAH! Hideous!

I have been hankering for beetroot, for reasons known only to my body. So when I saw that snarly pair at the supermarket I bought them.  Then they sat on the bench in the kitchen for a few days whilst I pondered them. The only thing that I really know to do with beetroots is include them in cake or make them into carpaccio. I was definitely wanting savoury, so carpaccio it was. 

Beetroots are ugly, they are messy and they are slippery (when wet). They require caution. I popped them into the pot and cooked them whole on a moderate heat. I let them bubble away and get all pink.

What in God's name...

Whenever I cook beetroot I always have this crazy impulse to dye things in the house pink. It is part of my ongoing fantasy that I am a sort of earth mother house frau. That I take the products that mother earth provides and use them in all their various ways. To feed the babies and clean the house and dye the clothes. Pink. Anyway I got a grip on myself and didn't do it. But I was very close..... very close.

Once the beetroot is cooked (a metal skewer goes in and out with the kind of resistance you'd expect from a girl that likes you and is keen but needs to be talked round) I wait for it to cool down, the last thing I need to to be handling a molten pink ball of fire that is slippery and will stain everything it touches pink.

To get the skin off I donned rubber gloves. Ker-snap. I then rub the skins off under running water, its easy and quite satisfying. The comes the mandolin slicer. Yes, it's once of those devices that gets advertised at about 1am along with the "Ab-Sizer!". All of those products have exclamation points after their names, it goes without saying.

What happened here?! WHAT HAPPENED!!!

The mandolin slicer lets me slice beetroot very evenly and I don't get my hands dirty (as I am much like a cat - or person with OCD - when it comes to my paws/hands). The only issue is that it looks like an horrific crime has been committed. 

Detective: What happened here?
Police Rookie: I've never seen anything like it... ANYTHING LIKE IT!!!! Slices everywhere, all over the walls, everything SLICED!
Detective: These slices are pleasingly regular, I'd say that this was done with a mandolin slicer. Did he have any enemies that were nightowls? Check their credit card statements for purchases made between 1 and 2am.

Winsomely magenta.

And there they are, they really are beautiful - the colour and smell! Sigh. My mouth was watering. I hadn't actually been able to find the original recipe, it called for some feta cooking shenanigans which I wasn't about to entertain. I was heading to rehearsal, So I decided to assemble a couple of plates of the beetroot there.

I made a simple mustard vinaigrette and added some fresh thyme leaves to that, grabbed the Persian feta and some big fresh basil leaves.

Feta

Persian

To assemble: Crumble the feta over the beetroot, rip the basil leaves up and scatter, nymph like. Top with a drizzle of dressing. I don't like masses of dressing - I like the actual flavour of beetroot. Then we ate it. Wayne, Jonathan and myself. And it was delicious. I forgot to take a last picture of it, so here is an approximation.

Mine looked nothing like that, but that is beetroot on that plate - so let's call it even.