Tricks of the Light

It is Halloween. The clocks have been turned back and outside the day is dying young. As the light fades my newly carved jack o’ lantern is thrown into grinning, lopsided relief. In the spirit of this festival, I am going to enjoy his cackling smile for one more evening before hacking him up and turning him into pumpkin bread. A fitting end for a Halloween character.

As promised, I am in the midst of pickling. And when I say ‘in the midst,’ I mean that I am curled up in an arm chair listening to the soothing gurgle of my beets boiling on the stove, waiting for them to become tender. I chose beets to begin my foray into the land of pickled foods because I remember with relish my mother’s version—a tongue curling wallop of vinegar followed by the intense and earthy sweetness of the root itself. Also, the process looked childishly simple: beets, vinegar, spices and sugar; boil, boil, bottle and store. Finally, the nutritional value of beets is well known; they are action packed with invigorating vitamins and minerals, and are particularly good for cleansing the liver.  This morning, when I arose from the aftermath of another festive Saturday night, with little sleep in my pocket and a unaccountable battle taking place between the various portions of my body, I naturally warmed to the thought of preparing such a wholesome, reviving food.

The following recipe gives you a small quantity of pickled beets.  Sadly I don’t own a canning kettle yet so I’m pickling in small batches until I find one.

2 1/2 pounds beets
2 cups white vinegar
1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
6 whole cloves
3 whole allspice
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon salt

Scrub beets to remove dirt. Leave them whole with a little stem attached to minimize the loss of juices during boiling. Put them in a pot, cover with water, bring to the boil and cook until just tender, that is until you can pierce them through with a metal skewer. Drain and rinse under cold water. Allow beets to cool until you can handle them, then slip off skins, cut off stems, and slice into wedges. Tie the spices up into a little bundle in some cheese cloth.  Next prepare the brine by tossing this spice sashay into a pot with all remaining ingredients and bringing to the boil. Add beets and simmer for five minutes. Remove spice sashay. Remove beets from liquid with a slotted spoon or tongs, pack into jars, and pour brine mixture in to cover beets.

Note: If you are doing this properly, unlike me, you will need to sterilize the jars first, pack full of beets, add brine to cover beets with 1/2 inch of head space (the space between the top of liquid and lid of jar), and process in a water bath canning kettle. If you follow proper canning rules, you can preserve beets for the whole year.

Besides being a purifying and nutritious food, pickling beets turned out to be the perfect spooky Halloween project. Pressing off their skin streaks your hands a creepy crimson. And when you slice them in half the center reveals a warped underworld sunset, the blackened outer rim softening through rusty red to a delicate, almost translucent heart of pink.