Simple Beet Soup (Cool or Warm)

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Today I read that mothering is inherited.  How one mothers descends three generations, unless a significant event interferes.  Beet-love, I believe, is the same.  My mother has often recounted what my grandmother made her in the week after I was born: roasted beets.

Despite my mother’s love for those beets and her affinity for vegetables of all types, she shunned beets until a couple of years ago.  Her reason?  The stains.  I can understand why she wanted to avoid the juicy palms that leave magenta stamp marks in their tracks.  (Rubbing olive oil on my hands before peeling and washing with soap and a scrub brush after has worked for me.  Julia Child recommends rubbing the stained area with salt, rinsing, and then scrubbing with soap.)  Thankfully, she is now a bona fide beet lover once again.

After my first week of life, I didn’t rediscover beets until 2005 while living in Burlington, Vermont.  I went to one of my favorite lunch spots, Penny Cluse Café, where I had the salad of the day: classic dark red beets, quartered, black lentils, arugula, and mild sheep’s milk feta in an Italian parsley and lemon vinaigrette.  That lunch, on a bitingly cold, sunny day in March, effected a paradigm shift in my root-vegetable world.  Before that day, root vegetables meant potatoes, Russet and new, sweet potatoes (confusingly adulterated with marshmallows and brown sugar throughout my youth on Thanksgiving to satisfy my grandfather, who has an otherwise restrained and elegant palate), and carrots (reserved for crudités, I always thought).

Suddenly there were beets.  Since then, I’ve made roasted beets with butter and licoricey tarragon, a formidable partner to roasted beets’ soiliness.  I’ve made raw beet salads and beet dip.  I’ve used golden beets and Chioggas, evocative of a pink-and-white pinwheel for munchkins.  There have been cooked-beet salads with all sorts of fruits, greens, herbs, and spices.  I have not made beet sorbet.  But I might.  More recently, I had a major beet craving during Elinor’s second month, so I roasted pounds of tiny ones at the beginning of each week and snacked on them throughout the day, later making them into dinner, often the Penny Cluse salad, but with goat cheese.

And then I had the most simple beet soup the other night at Chez Panisse Café. Velvety and thick enough to coat the back of my spoon—but not as thick as baby food—it captured the most pure essence of red beets.  Nothing intruded on the rustic root’s gentle earthiness.  It was not roasted to concentrate its flavor, not acidified with lemon or vinegar, not competing with raw apples or cucumbers or mint.  Bright and vivid and standing alone, it was.

From my grandmother to my mother, then from my mother to me, and now from me to Elinor.  Absent a beet blight, Elinor, I’d venture to say that you’ll get the beet-love, too.  And that makes four. [/donotprint]

Simple Beet Soup

Apparently Chez Panisse Café makes this soup in the spring and summer with water, but uses lamb or beef stock in the fall and winter.  I would substitute roasted beets in the cooler seasons as well.  This soup’s festive color is perfect party food, and I imagine that it would be as enjoyable cool or at room temperature as it is warm.

Butter to coat the bottom of the pan
1 medium yellow onion
1 medium carrot
1 clove of garlic
2 potatoes (I had one Russet and sweet on hand.)
1 pound beets ( unpeeled for a more rustic flavor)
4 cups water

Serves 4 generous bowls.

C O O K . Roughly chop all of the vegetables (smaller pieces will cook faster).  In a medium sauce pan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the onion, carrot, garlic, and a splash of water, and cover.  Cook until the vegetables are soft and the onion is glossy.  Add the potatoes and beets and simmer, mostly covered, until you can slide a sharp knife in and out of the potatoes and beets without any resistance, about 30 minutes.  Turn off the heat.  Blend the soup (I use an immersion blender; if you use a standard blender, blend only small amounts at a time or else expect a magenta Jackson Pollock piece on your kitchen walls.  If cooking by hand, use a food mill.) If you prefer a thicker consistency, continue simmering.  Season.

E A T  A N D  D R I N K . Serve with some crème fraîche and a delicate herb, minced, such as chives, dill, tarragon, or mint.  I love sparkling water and lemon with beets, but a Sancerre or a northern Italian Sauvignon Blanc would also be an excellent match.

V A R Y . If your palate is demanding a more elaborate performance, consider the following (or, use the following ideas for leftover soup):

• Go Orangey. Omit one cup of water and add the juice and zest of two large oranges after pureeing the soup.  This combination is particularly good topped with dill and goat cheese.
• Beet Boriani. Once pureed, reduce the soup over a gentle heat until thickened substantially and bordering on a paste.  Add 1.5 cups of thick or Greek yogurt (to do this at home, line a fine mesh sieve with two layers of cheesecloth, pour in regular yogurt, do two loads of laundry, and then peel out the remaining yogurt solids from the cheesecloth (4 to 6 hours later); the liquid whey is great for fermenting or is a nutritious drink alone), a clove of minced garlic, and a small bunch of minced dill.  Use the resulting sauce to top chicken or mild fish.  Or, don’t reduce at the outset and serve as a chilled soup.  Adapted from Moro East.
• Creamy Beet Soup with Marjoram. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream—or more!— and top with minced marjoram.

L I T T L E  E A T S . Need I elaborate?

Text and photo © Blue Egg Kitchen 2010

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