The primordial beet.

04/14/2010
The primordial beet.

It's not often that a single vegetable variety could be so extraordinary as to inspire me to write an article about it.  But the 'Rouge Crapaudine' beet is that variety.

Now, the beet is categorically one of the most humble vegetables.  No other root seems to distill such a quintessentially earthy flavor--deep, sweet, but with that peculiar dark basenote that is the heartblood of the beet.  No other vegetable tastes even vaguely similar to the beet.  When I crush a slice of roasted beet on my tongue, I am transported back in time.  Way back.  In fact, there is something primordial about the flavor of the beet.

Then, of course, there is the unapologetic, unsubtle color of the thing:  beet red, as they say.  It's a pigment that is an intense purplish red and that bleeds shamelessly when you cook the roots, making it impossible aesthetically to mix beets with other vegetables.  I could almost imagine that beet juice is the blood of the earth. 

'Rouge Crapaudine' is the most ancient named beet variety on record.  And according to the botanical historian Andrew Dalby, a beet mentioned in a Greek document dating from 320 B.C. was most likely the precursor of the 'Rouge Crapaudine' familiar to French gardeners since the 1600s.

'Rouge Crapaudine' means 'red toadlike one.'  And indeed, this beet is a far cry from the smooth-skinned, round red beets of today's supermarkets and, sad to say, gardens.  The Crapaudine is resolutely homely, with elongated, craggy roots covered in a thick, fissured, blackish skin that resembles the bark of a young tree.  In fact, the first time you see the Crapaudine, you might not even recognize it as a beet.  It's a wild, savage vegetable that makes no apologies to civilization or to the modern demand for uniformity.

And here we come to the crux of the matter.  I love the Crapaudine because not only does it taste lightyears better than any other beet, but because it is the Uhr-beet:  the original, as close to the untamed wild beet as we can come.

The Crapaudine doesn't lend itself to easy harvest or easy cleaning.  The elongated roots plunge deeply into the ground and don't raise theirs shoulders into the air for the convenience of the harvester, as modern beets do.  The bottom of the fleshy root tapers off into a slender taproot that makes this ancient beet superbly-drought resistant.  You usually need to arm yourself with a fork to pry the Crapaudine from its dark, secret life underground.  The Crapaudine, like any wild plant, is adapted to survive!

Another interesting testimonial to the "wildness" of the Crapaudine is its seeds.  These are tiny and single, not big compound seeds like those of modern beets, which actually contain several individual seeds.

The flesh of the Crapaudine is fine-grained, dense, and the most deeply colored of any beet.  Paradoxically, its foliage, held vigorously upright, is almost entirely green, with only the stems and ribs sometimes bearing blushes of red.  Also paradoxically, the Crapaudine resists becoming woody much better than modern varieties.  In fact, I've never harvested a tough root, even though I hold them in the garden and am still eating last year's planting now in mid-April.  Perhaps this long-lived tenderness is due to the fact that the Crapaudine is a long-season, slow-maturing variety, suited to fall and winter harvest.  Definitely not for insipid (by comparison) baby beet crops.

When you bring the Crapaudine into the kitchen, you'll need to arm yourself with a stiff-bristled brush to clean the craggy root.  I employ the singular because a single root is usually sufficient for a meal.  Trim off the filamentous side rootlets and the taprootish tip of the beet.  Leave a stub of leaf stems in place to prevent the Crapaudine from bleeding copiously during cooking.  You'll need to scrub the top of the root hard, as that part is usually particularly rough and scaly.  Your toadlike one is now ready for cooking.

Of coure, you can cook the Crapaudine in boiling water, but what a shame that would be.  Because the elemental nature of this ancient beet demands fire to bring out its best earthy self.  Wrap the Crapaudine thickly in aluminum foil and bury it in hot ashes after even the coals have died down in your fireplace.  In the morning, it will be cooked to deep, dark, sweet perfection. (Take care not to put the beet into hot coals unless you plan to turn it frequently and monitor its doneness.)

Don't have a fireplace?  Not to worry, there's an even better way to cook the Crapaudine:  the diable, a squat, rustic clay pot designed to cook vegetables without the use of oil.  The diable  is like a miniature clay oven that transforms its vegetable contents into concentrated sweetness.  And for no vegetable is that as true as for the Crapaudine.  But for the name of the pot, which means 'devil,' I'd say the diable and the Crapaudine are a match made in heaven.  You can cut your Crapaudine into chunks if you need to in order to fit it into the diable.  Add a handful of coarse sea salt and you're set to go.  The dry heat of this incredible pot keeps the beet from bleeding as it cooks.

Once the Crapaudine emerges from its pact with the devil, it's daunting bark-like skin slips off easily and it is ready to use in whatever way you like to use cooked beets--hot and simply dressed with butter; in salad, or other more complex recipes.  But I'm willing to bet that it won't be long before you do what I do:  you'll look over your shoulder to make sure no one's observing your primitive behavior.  Then you'll simply bite directly into that deep, dark, silky beetroot and close your eyes with pleasure.  How can anything so simple, so unadorned, so primordial, taste so incredibly good?

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Products of Interest:
Beet 'Rouge Crapaudine'
Diable