Irrational Love of the Beet

Dear Beets,
I like the way you stay on my hands for hours, how peeling your earthened skin reveals the most vibrant purple-red. I think you invented purple-red. If I were born a root in the ground I, too, would grow the most vivid innards, like yours. I’d let my color bleed and ooze in pattern, in contrast, with all the bright, shocking life I could. I’d take over a dish, too, because I could.

I think if you bit a heart it’d have the feel of a boiled beet, like soft wood.

These photos are not enhanced in anyway but look! Look at how gorgeous they are. I have an irrational love of the beet. I’d like to wear one around my neck.

So these are the two fillings for my autumn ravioli for FoodSparrow’s Thanksgiving potluck. On the left, buttercup squash and sage filling, blogged here, and on the right, Vegalicious‘s beet ravioli.

Digressing from my beet love to get down to the nitty gritty, let’s talk making pasta. It is really, really easy but very time-consuming. Semolina flour makes a soft and bindy little blob of dough.

And it’s super easy to stretch this blob thin.

Not having a ravioli cutter, I used a regular old cookie cutter to shape my ravioli after dropping teaspoons of filling on the stretched dough. Jeez, this took a while. In order to avoid hasteful waste, I had to take 10 minute breaks, rating songs on iTunes and posting nonsense to facebook.

Wishing on many semolina stars, I wished for time and energy in heart and mind: The time and energy to extend their beat and pulse beyond the epidermis.

Some of the seams were thin so my fork did the trick and also made my ravioli look like bloomed flowers and a sunbeams. Sorry this is such a corny post.

Instead of immersing these delicate little babies in boiling water, I used Vegan for the People‘s method of steaming them in a small puddle of water and olive oil. This worked quite well!

I forgot to mention the sauces! On the left: roasted garlic and walnut sauce (here again) and on the right: fava bean sauce (here again). Both were delicious and easy to make! And fava beans, I never had them before. Hannibal Lechter kinda turned me off to them.

Finally I get to eat! AFter a really log morning of prepping this dish, I was able to eat some of the “irregular” ravioli and still have a ton for the potluck. Hope they are well received!