Health food: Beetroot

What is it?

Beetroot varies from the everyday – the big blush-red one used for pickling – to the internally striped, delicately sweet Chioggia heirloom variety. Not only in season, it's also in fashion, rapidly finding its way onto health-conscious eaters' shopping lists as we learn more about its benefits: antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, soluble fibre, flavonoids, folic acid, you name it. Juiced raw with celery, carrot and apple, blitzed into cakes with dates and chocolate, or roasted and tossed with greens, grains and goat's cheese, beetroot's bleedingly obvious presence on the plate is here to stay.

Where is it?

YouTube sensations Guy Turland and Mark Alston give beetroot a starring role on the menu at their new Bondi Harvest cafe in Bondi Junction, while their roasted beetroot dip is getting plenty of clicks on the Bondi Harvest website. "Roasted veg like beetroot are epic for dips," says Guy Turland. "We do our dip with roast beets, roast garlic, almonds, soft goat's cheese, coconut oil and thyme from the garden. It's a mosh pit of everything tasty put in a food processor." As a chef, Turland says he loves the fact that beets bring so much colour to a dish. "And they're awesome for you," he says. "I think they are an unappreciated super food. The only thing they're not good for is your white chef's jacket."

Raw foodies love beetroot just as much. At two-year-old Shokuiku organic-macrobiotic cafe, chef-owner Yoko Inoue's colourful beetroot dip is added to salads, served with raw crackers, and folded into the raw, gluten-free house wrap along with vegetable cous cous and a plant-based "sour cream". To make it, she combines raw beetroot with coconut meat, cashews, hemp seed, thyme, black pepper and a little water in a high-speed blender until smooth and creamy. "We use beetroot quite a lot in cakes and in smoothies as well as the house dip," she says. "My philosophy is macrobiotic, so we try to use the whole vegetable, unpeeled."

Why do I care?

Because it's practically un-Australian not to eat beetroot.

Can I do it at home?

Totally. Wrap beetroot in foil and bake at 180C for one hour or until soft, then whiz with chickpeas, tahini and spices for a vibrant hummus, or keep things raw with the recipe here.

SOURCING

VIC
Shokuiku 120 High Street, Northcote 0403 569 019 www.shokuikuaustralia.com

NSW
Bondi Harvest First Floor, Eastern Hotel, 500 Oxford Street, Bondi Junction 02 9387 7828 bondiharvest.com

Raw beetroot dip

500g beetroots, trimmed and scrubbed

3 spring onions, white and greens, chopped

2 tbsp avocado, chopped

1 red chilli, finely sliced

1 tsp ground coriander

2 tbsp walnuts

3 tbsp coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

sea salt and pepper

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tbsp mint leaves

1. Chop the beetroot and combine with the spring onions, avocado, chilli, coriander, walnuts, oil, lemon juice, sea salt and pepper in a high-speed blender. Whiz for two minutes until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides once or twice.

2. Taste and adjust spices, sea salt and pepper. Scatter with sesame seeds, mint leaves, and a final drizzle of olive oil, and serve as a dip with roast vegetable chips, vegetable crudite or crisp leaves, or as a relish with other dishes.

Serves 4