The one in which I ate beetroot…..

Anyone who knows me, is cogniscant of the fact that I hate beetroot.  I love all root vegetables (well, not too keen on Jerusalem artichokes…) but beetroot…no.  I don’t like the taste (sort of sweet and earthy), and really hate the way they colour all the other food around them.

Beetroot is a divisive vegetable, and as you can tell, I have always firmly sat on the ‘no thanks’ camp. The thought of a slice of beetroot with a burger, popular here, makes me feel quite ill, and the idea of a beetroot based cake….no thank you. This dislike may be partly due to only tasting boiled beetroot when younger, which is quite vile, and don’t even say the words ‘pickled beetroot’ if you want me to stay your friend.

But a couple of months back, I happened across a small piece of roast beetroot by accident in a salad.  I ate it, and while it wasn’t the best thing I had ever eaten, it wasn’t the worst.  So, this weekend I decided to try roasting some baby beetroot.  I had hoped to find the golden ones, thinking there would be no bleeding of purple all over the rest of the food, but couldn’t find any so stuck with purple.

To be on the safe side, I roasted them with some kumara, which, if the worst came to the worst, I thought I could pick out.  Preheat the oven to 200C, slice up a kumara (sweet potato), scrub, top and tail and chop up some baby beetroot, and season.  I used garlic (which always makes things good), salt, and some rosemary, as that is what we have in the garden.  Pour over a generous amount of good olive oil and roast for about 40 minutes or until soft.  Top with feta and sunflower seeds.

Verdict:  I ate them, but not with great relish.  The garlic helped a lot, but I really hated the way the beetroot turned everything purple.

Would I eat them again?  If there was one tiny roast bit in a salad, probably.  Boiled or pickled – no thanks.

Apologies to Life Patisserie for pictures of beetroot 🙂

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