BEETROOT

Welcome to another one of those 'wonderfoods' that's so good for you that you wonder why you hated it so much when you were a child! Unsurprisingly it's related to sugar beet, but most of us are taken aback when we learn that botanically it's a relative of spinach, chard and samphire.

These specimens are from Littleport -- the Fens provide a near-perfect combination of soil and moisture for a sweet full-flavoured root. In fact, cultivation for the root is a relatively modern feature of our relationship with the plant: originally, it was the leaves that were prized, and then largely for their medicinal qualities. The focus on the root only emerged in the late Middle Ages.

Nutritionally, beetroot is something of a pharmacist's chest! It has a much higher sugar and salt content than most vegetables, and you should bear this in mind when boiling them -- don't add salt to the water. But they're also rich in vitamin C, in folic acid and magnesium, manganese and potassium. And the leaves live up to their early medicinal origins, offering us iron and calcium as well as beta-carotene. This cocktail of chemicals, albeit 'natural' ones, can be used to counter depression and to promote a sense of well-being.

You can boil or bake them -- in either case, use the whole beet because the nutritional properties decrease astonishingly rapidly when the root is cut. For similar reasons, cook them with the skins in place -- they'll rub off quite easily when the plant is cooked. The leaves can be used in any way that you like spinach or chard. And the popularity of beetroot in Eastern Europe is responsible for the famous beetroot soup dish, borscht.

Beetroot are anecdotally delightful as well. The Romans considered them an aphrodisiac (there's quite a long list of erotically-charged vegetables!) and had a superstition that if a man and a woman ate from the same root they would fall in love.

 

 

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