I didn’t used to like beetroot when I was a child, but particularly since moving to Japan, I find that I get nostalgic for the bygone tastes of Britain, and now I make a point of asking Mrs M to buy the pickled version when she goes to Costco. A few weeks ago she bought some fresh beetroot – which is difficult enough to find in the UK – at our local branch of the all-conquering Aeon supermarket chain. Not only that, but it was reduced (both Mrs M and myself can detect items adorned with cut-price stickers like a shark detecting a drop of blood in the ocean or a guided missile zeroing in on an enemy tank).
If I had eaten fresh beetroot before, I don’t remember when that was or what it was like. Either way, this tasted great and frankly better than the pickled version – rather like a carrot, but juicier and with an even more incredible colour, which stains your fingers at the slightest touch and makes your sink and washing up bowl look like a murder scene.
As is my wont, I grated it onto my so-called crazy salads and mixed it with various vegan protein powders and whatever other vegetables, beans, nuts and so on were lying around the kitchen. Grating it onto a helping of natto and mixing in a dollop of soya yoghurt proved to be a surprisingly delicious combination, and was about as experimental as I got. Mrs M, though, who was enjoying some stress-free time off during the summer holiday, felt inspired enough to create some innovative new recipes to go with one or two well-worn classics.
For example, and as you can see, she made beetroot foccacia with olives and fresh rosemary; beetroot and tofu burgers with an interesting ingredient called okara, to which I will devote another plant-based Japan post in future; beetroot, banana, and mango smoothies, which she then froze to make a kind of purple sorbet; beetroot and choc-chip brownies (purplies?); and perhaps best of all, beetroot hummus, which is the kind of thing you can find in many British supermarkets, but I’ll wager pretty much no one in Japan has ever eaten before.
Hummus (or as we seem to spell it more often in the UK, houmous) is, as you probably know, addictively delicious and versatile, and beetroot gives it that extra-special something in terms of colour, texture, and taste, to be twinned in delectable combination with toast, crackers, crisps (i.e. potato chips), vegetable sticks – the list goes on.
It has to be said, however, that after several weeks of eating beetroot for an average of two meals a day, it did eventually become monotonous. At the risk of providing you with slightly more information than you really need, it also turns your poo purple. Having purple poo isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but perhaps you can have too much of a good thing, and at one stage I was worried that, in a similar way to an orange-faced Oompa-Loompa, my skin itself would turn beet red.
While I was still my usual shade of pale pink, I eventually suggested to Mrs M that even if she found yet more cut-price beetroot at Aeon, she needn’t buy it. The fact that the beetroot is almost always reduced when she goes there means that before long, the manager will realise there is not enough demand for this super-coloured superfood, and the next time I get a craving, we will have to revert to the Costco version and/or wait until a different supermarket decides to experiment by putting it on the shelves.
Still, the Muzuhashis (the grown-ups in the family, that is – as you may have guessed, M Jr I and II were repulsed by the mere thought of beetroot and didn’t touch a single spoonful of any of Mrs M’s recipes) were blessed with an interesting culinary diversion during this year’s sweltering summer holiday.
