The least hip thing you can do:
Serve all of your friends and customers something they have terrible childhood memories of. Like beets. You remember. Your first beet (most likely pickled, boiled, or overcooked, or something) is a real formative experience; the earthy, sometimes dirty taste and sweet linger of a beet is kind of unsettling. The pickling kills the deep flavor, boiling rounds it out, roasting concentrates it, and leaving it raw is apparently disgusting, wrong, and absolutely forbidden.
I am of the type that pretty much shoves anything into my mouth raw. I was, however, schooled the other day while cooking with the beautiful and lovely Laura who was crunching on raw sweet potatoes.
Me: “::scoffs:: Can you do that?”
Laura: “Yeah…of course,” like it’s really-really obvious.
Me: “Oh. Okay..ccrcrcr-” shoving sweet potatoes into my mouth a little embarrassed I didn’t think of it first.It was like a less carroty carrot: sweet, light, crunchy, nothing bitter. Good for a veg platter and ranch. Or aoili…mmm…Let’s not go there yet
With the exception of you RAWists, most people don’t sit around and think about eating raw root vegetables. It’s time to take a page out of the Crazy Vegan’s Handbook for Adventurous Eating: Bust out that overpriced mandolin you haven’t used yet, and let’s get slicing!
