(beetroots)
Every year, before the summer really starts, I spend hours in the
grocery store, not knowing what to chose because most crates are
empty: the cabbages have perished, green salads are finally
flowering, all the beans have been picked and it's still some time
before the tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines and the zucchini can be
harvested from the gardens.
A vegetable easy to preserve and what I previously thought of as a
winter vegetable, is filling the gaps of all those vegetables not yet
ready for summer: beetroots! Cucumber and tomatoes are synonymous
with Greek cooking, and not many people will believe me when I say
beetroots also belong to the Greek kitchen. This vegetable even had
its cradle in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea.
According to old Assyrian writings beetroots were present in the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon. In ancient times Egyptians and Greeks
just ate the green stalks; it was the Romans who discovered the
culinary side of the tuber. Greeks preserved the tubers for the gods
and offered them in Delphi to Apollo, their weight counted in silver
(turnips in gold). Aphrodite must have eaten tonnes of them because
she believed it was beetroots that kept her beauty and lust for love
alive. No wonder the Romans later thought beetroots to have
aphrodisiac power. Even the walls of a brothel in Pompeij were
covered with paintings of beetroots. There still is a belief that
when two persons eat from the same beetroot, they will fall in love.
And when in ancient times you ‘went to the beetroot fields’, it
meant you were visiting the whores. Montgomery still used this
expression during World War Two, sending his soldiers not only to the
Killing Fields, but also to the beetroot fields.
The beetroots on the plates of the Greeks and Romans in ancient times
were not like the ones we eat now, rather more like a kind of wild
spinach (the plant that was the precursor of the beetroot). That
might explain why their leaves still taste like spinach. Moreover,
the tubers were black or white. I am wondering how it is that through
time the beetroots got their red color. Was it through the Crusaders
having brought them from the battlefields drenched in blood? It was
only in the Middle Ages that the red beetroots turned up in the
European kitchens.
There
are masses of beetroot recipes. The oldest surviving cookbook, De
re Coquinaria, by the
Roman cook Apicius has two
recipes for beetroots.
The classical Greek recipe for beetroots is (just like all other
Greek dishes) very simple: they are cooked and served with their
green leaves, sprinkled with olive oil, lemon or vinegar. You may eat
them together with a garlic dip (skordalia).
I was very happy when last week I was served a new salad in my
favorite Greek restaurant Meltemi in Skamnioudi: grated beetroots
with nuts and a dressing that I cannot yet identify. My other
favorite beetroot salad is served in Majoram (Molyvos) where besides
traditional Greek they also serve fusion food and salads that are
like mountains, only to be eaten by more than one set of knife and
fork.
This
week when I cooked beetroots, I was wondering how to dress them: I
still had those grated beetroots in mind, so I decided to give them a
go. But where to get nuts? It
was too late
to crack walnuts or to crush almonds and peel them. Then I saw a pot
of serundeng,
a
leftover from an Indonesian meal. Nuts! And coconut? Why not. I mixed
two tablespoons with mayonnaise, one tea spoon honey and three
tablespoons of serundeng and put it over the rasped beetroots:
divine!
In
ancient times and in the Middle Ages there was a strong belief in the
medicinal benefits of beetroots. Modern food gurus now confirm how
healthy it is to eat them. Before the tomato-madness breaks out, I
will be cooking plenty of these undervalued, purple-red tubers.
Greece is not only the country of tsatsiki
and choriatiki,
but also of these by Aphrodite so much appreciated pantsaria
(beetroots).
(With
thanks to Mary Staples)
©
Smitaki 2017
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