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To those of you who read Thursday’s post with trepidation, wondering if this was the wave of the future for PTMYB, please feel free to breathe deeply and relax with a beverage.  I am over what was ailing me, and while normally I am embarrassed when I commit such fits of pique, I can’t say I regret this one, simply because your comments were all so good.  To Owen and ‘mouse...guys, we’ll talk.

Snowball has asked me if it’s true:  Can beets be made palatable?  Yes, dear, it’s true, it’s true!  (I am hearing that line as delivered by Madeline Kahn.) I am one of those depraved individuals who really likes beets in all their manifestations, save for the nasty canned made-for-school-cafeterias versions that kept me from eating beets as a youngster.  I like them raw, shredded into seasoned Greek yogurt; I like them roasted and poached and braised.  I like them in borscht, hot or cold.  I like them pureed into soups.  I like them pickled, suspended in a wine vinegar and tarragon brine with hard-boiled eggs, and I love how the beet dyes the egg whites hot pink and renders the yolks an even more brilliant shade of yellow.  Most of all, though, I like them in pasta sauce, specifically this one.

The starting point of this recipe was Beets with Angel Hair Pasta from More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin.  Ms. Colwin’s recipe calls for beets, cut into dice and sauteed in olive oil with garlic and hot pepper flakes until just tender; when the beets are ready, you add about 1/2 cup of chicken broth and simmer for a few minutes.  Boil your angel hair, grate some cheese, chop some parsley, turn your sauce into a bowl, drain your pasta and add it to the sauce and stir until everything is lurid pink.  Add parsley and cheese, mix them through, serve it forth.

I made this dish about 500 times over a ten-year period, sticking to “juicy, early-summer beets,” as Ms. Colwin advised.  In general, the only variation I made was to vary the chicken broth, normally relying on chicken stock from the freezer, but occasionally just picking up a pint of broth from the nice Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood.  Once, and only once, in a moment of bad planning, did I use canned chicken broth, and once, and only once, did the whole dish taste just terrible.  Eventually, though, I found myself varying the beets, the seasonings, the quantity of broth, the length of the cooking time, until I came up with something that, while not quite as easy as Ms. Colwin’s, is still pretty much a doddle, and tastes wonderful.

Of course you know I can’t just give you a recipe.  No, I have to rabbit on a bit about details…

Because this sauce is a bit more robust than Ms. Colwin’s original, I like to use something thicker than angel hair.  I am a fan of plain old spaghetti, and it works well here.

It really does make a difference to use the best chicken stock that you can find.  I have upped the quantity of stock and increased the cooking time, so the flavors of the stock will become concentrated, and if your broth is full of additives and artificial taste enhancers, they will only taste stronger in the finished sauce.  If you are a vegetarian, you can certainly use vegetable stock.  I have done it and it works nicely, although I would stir in a few tablespoons of olive oil into the sauce right before you add the pasta.  I have never tried using plain water, but if the thought of bothering with broth exhausts you, by all means, try it and see if you like it (and let me know how it works).

The common red beet is very good in this sauce, and it will be the easiest to find, but my favorite beet for this is the Chioggia striped beet, which I get at the Greenmarket.  Chioggia beets have fuchsia skins and candy-cane-colored flesh, overall white with deep pink concentric rings.  When you cook them, the color fades and dissipates, which is a shame, because they’re so pretty raw.  If you cook them in vegetable stock, the flesh turns white; in chicken stock, it turns a deep gold.  You can also use something called golden beets, which produces a sauce so brilliantly-colored that people will swear that you put a little turmeric in the mix.

Although it’s not part of Ms. Colwin’s recipe, I never make this anymore without fresh marjoram.  I don’t remember how I arrived at this conclusion, probably by just noodling around (if you’ll pardon the pun), but there is something about marjoram that just pulls this sauce together for me.  The best way to describe its aroma is a cross between citrus and dust.  It sounds weird, if not outright horrible, but honestly, it smells grand, and tastes even better.  On a whim one night I threw some extra marjoram sprigs into the boiling water for the pasta, and the resulting pasta had a depth of flavor that made me smile.

Because the sauce is rich, you may want to taste it before adding grated cheese, but if you like cheese, or if the sauce could use a little salt, then do add it in.

Enough finger-wagging.  It’s time to boil water.

Spaghetti with Beet Sauce
Serves 2

2 tablespoons olive oil
4-5 smallish beets, about 2” in diameter
1 large or 2 medium cloves garlic, minced
pinch dried hot pepper flakes, or 1 dried bird chile
2-4 cups chicken or vegetable stock (If you use the smaller amount of stock, you will be braising the beets; if you use the larger, you will be boiling them.  Either way is perfectly acceptable.  The larger quantity will yield a more flavorful sauce, but it will take longer to reduce and will steam up your kitchen.  Once again, it all comes down to what works best for you.)
about 6-8 sprigs fresh marjoram
1/2 pound spaghetti
salt and pepper
grated Parmigiano, grana or Pecorino Romano cheese (optional)

Fill a pasta pot or stockpot with water and heat to boiling.

Heat a saucepan or Dutch oven (I use enameled cast iron), add the olive oil and heat through.  Add the beets and saute gently.  When the beets just begin to get tender, add the garlic and hot pepper.  If your stock is unseasoned, add a bit of salt to the vegetables.  Strip the leaves off half the marjoram stalks.  Add the stock and the marjoram leaves, bring to a boil and let reduce to about 2/3 cup.  The stock will be thick and syrupy and the beets will be shiny.

When the pasta water comes to a boil, salt it, add the pasta and throw in the other half of the marjoram sprigs.  (If you tie them together before you throw them in, you are spared the joy of picking hot marjoram sprigs out of boiling-hot spaghetti when everything is done.)

At this point, you can either serve the sauce as is, or you can puree it in a blender.  I like this pureed.  Either way, decant the sauce into a bowl, drain the pasta and add to the sauce, fish out the marjoram stalks, and stir until the pasta is evenly sauced.  Add cheese if you like it, leave it off if you don’t.