Beetroot

Versatile beets add a splash of colour and an earthy sweetness to these seasonal recipes.

- Diana Henry

The sun is refusing to set, even though it’s after midnight, and spreads a drowsy light over everything. I’m in an idyllic spot, sitting on a jetty that stretches from a small island in Stockholm’s archipelago. My hostess is serving supper. The sheer simplicity of it makes it as beautiful as the setting. There are no candelabras – there aren’t even serving dishes – just tea lights and an array of saucepans.

The buttery potatoes are covered in a shower of dill, the salmon has come straight from the smoker, there’s a bowl of cool soured cream (of course there is). Then we lift a lid to find drained beets: vermillion globes that we peel ourselves and eat warm with the soured cream. The flesh is sweet, and yielding but firm – cutting beetroot is very satisfying.

Scandinavians love beetroot – they are to them what carrots are to us – and Americans do too. (There you find beetroot in salads with goat’s cheese, nuts and oranges. They love them so much that they just call them beets, like they’re an old friend.)

Russians love beetroot too, in meaty soups, in purées to eat with game, or diced and anointed with soured cream. In Georgia, beetroot is pounded with nuts, garlic, coriander, a little cayenne and red wine vinegar to produce a rough mixture that can be eaten as part of a zakuski spread, similar to meze.

With this wealth of possibilities, why on earth did we British end up pickling beetroot? This, for years, was how we knew it – the dark circles of colour on our salad plates, the ingredient that stained everything it touched.