The Sacred Art of Eating

As previously discussed, beetroot are fundamentally disappointing when they aren’t properly red. This was never more apparent than last week when we decided to make beetroot risotto. We’d seen a gorgeous picture in a recipe book at the Village Store, something like the one below (snapped by Renaissance Chambara), and were inspired. Only it turned out the beetroot we’d picked up were of the sneaky pink on the outside, white on the inside variety, weren’t they?

Not having our own recipe for beetroot risotto, we turned to the internet. For reasons of, I think time, we didn’t want to have to roast our beetroot first, so we plumped for this recipe from The Times, where you grate the beetroot and let it simmer in your warm stock, to be ladled across periodically and cook at the same time as the rice.

Our beetroot actually started out quite pretty, with the white inner stained pink by the skin resulting in almost candy-hued shreds of veg. I was imagining girly children’s party food….but of course, as the cooking went on, it went grey…

Grey is really a very unappealing colour for food. You’ll notice we took no pictures! However, this risotto was sublime. This was probably in no small part due to the rich addition of butter and crème fraîche (which, unlike mascarpone, we had in the fridge) and could probably be improved on further with the use of proper chicken stock (we don’t eat a lot of proper roast meat so we don’t often have BONES). I’m not sure I’m really getting across how scrummy it was.

Definitely worth repeating and hopefully, with the correct ingredients, worth showing off. Alternatively, with a little sculpting, we serve it on Halloween as Brains as the centrepiece to some sort of Zombie Dinner party. Actually, that’s a neat idea for the future….

Trackback URI | Comments RSS