Beetroot in the back yard

Fresh beetroot sometimes tastes as if you’re biting into clean, sweet earth. This earthiness, the sugar content (higher than that of carrots and mielies) and the concentrated jewel-like colour are both a joy and its undoing.

Or, as Nigel Slater puts it in his cookbook Tender: Volume 1: “It is sod’s law that beetroot should marry so happily with the virginal white of goat’s cheeses, mascarpone and thick puddles of crème fraîche, none of whose looks are improved by a pink stain curdling the outer edge. I