The four main ingredients […] are prepared and arranged separately […] to capture the full spectrum of colour, before swishing the leaves in juices and painting the plate hot pink.
Beetroot may well be one of my favourite vegetables, for Brandon, not so much. He’s always teasing my love affair with the dark magenta varieties, calling them ‘bloodfruit’ because of how they leech their juices all over the plate. But he has a ‘bloodfruit’ of his own that he’s smitten with, which is not only closer in name but stained our fruit board pink with its rosy juices: the blood orange.
Last Sunday there were blood oranges in abundance at the market, sold as fruit, being squeezed into juice, and this salad is the result of both our beloved ‘bloodfruits’ showing up at the same time. The lucky-packet bunch of beets included not only red ones but candy-striped Chioggia’s too, so the range of pinks was like an artist’s palette, from soft, rose petal shades to deep maroon.
One of the varieties we’ve harvested before is, in fact, called Bull’s Blood. But even if that’s not in the mix, the red beets will bleed. So the four main ingredients – beetroot, blood orange, watercress, walnuts – are prepared and arranged separately, not just because each needs to be handled differently but to capture the full spectrum of colour, before swishing the leaves in juices and painting the plate hot pink.