In preparation for Saturday's terrine dinner, on Friday I cooked five large chiogga beets. I pared them down and used a biscuit cutter to create perfect cylinders and put them in the fridge--Stage two would come on Saturday morning when I would slice on the Benriner and pickle with a bit of vinegar, water and salt.
When I opened the container on Saturday I was shocked to find that two of the five had developed a large black spot each. Large meaning about the size of a dime sized marble.
WHAT? I haven't a clue what would cause this. I noted that the two affected beets were also the two with the most red, the deepest colors (chioggas are wonderfully marbled with color and no two, cut open, are alike). So could it be sugars and oxidation? Would that hold up even though the spots seemed to come from within the beet, it wasn't neccessarily at the surface or uniform around the edges?
Fortunately, I was able to get the 36 slices I needed from the other three beets so this problem didn't set me back, but it was so strange, and I'm curious if anyone's seen it before or has an idea why it happened.
And if there's anyone here who has never prepared chioggas or appreciated how heart-stoppingly beautiful and varied they are, this close-up's for you:
The design department at Nature Inc really outdid itself on this vegetable.
But seriously, I found myself want to slap the guy who complained that chioggas taste dirty. It's earthy, dude, the word's earthy. And that's precisely what is so good about them, rather than just being relentlessly sweet like the dark red beets they're less so, earthier, and the sweetness varies even among a handful of chioggas (the redder ones being sweeter, the lighter ones being more minerally). There's a sense of anticipation about every bite. The guy who complained must be a Yellow Tail Shiraz drinker. 