I’ve just realised this recipe for Roasted Beetroot with Za’atar and Fried Mint has a certain pink Hi Barbie! energy, which is entirely coincidental because I’m too tired to come up with any ruthless marketing tactics proactively this week. That being said, if it’s my subconscious who thought of it then I thank them (love doing things subconsciously, it’s like having an executive assistant whose work I can take credit for). This recipe is the seasonal inverse of my Tomatoes and Fried Mint; I’ve given it a thick, wool-lined winter coat and a darker shade of lipstick and am sending it on its way again.

Beetroot is divisive — its flavour can, if unchecked, lean towards a rusty profile, like a muddy bicycle left out in the rain. If you’re not a fan this won’t do much to persuade you, but for those of us who love its bloom of dewy cut grass and the danger money element of potentially staining everything you touch vivid crimson, this is for you. Despite its frivolous pink shade, beetroot is a serious vegetable with a hefty, potato-dense crumb. The lemony-sharp sumac in the za’atar and the luxuriantly rich yet light-textured fried mint lift beetroot out of the dirt and into the sun where it belongs. Indeed, if you can’t get hold of sumac, I’d recommend a fluffy smattering of lemon zest instead.

I first tried the Middle Eastern spice blend za’atar at Nigella Lawson’s behest about fifteen years ago (from a recipe in Forever Summer) and the version accompanying this beetroot is simple: just dried thyme, toasted sesame seeds, and citrussy sumac. You can increase the quantities in the recipe and keep the rest in a container for future use; you can also ignore it and buy a prepared blend from the supermarket. The woodsy richness of thyme and the nutty sesame point up those same flavours in the beetroot, but I also love it over any roasted vegetables; it also works fantastically with chicken. If you require some hand-holding over the fried mint, just know that the hot oil intensifies yet mellows the mint’s cool heat and the leaves, crisp and translucent as abandoned cicada shells clinging to a tree trunk, offer a pleasing delicate crunch.

Should you require further inspiration for winter vegetables doing their best to adopt an insouciant summery air, I suggest my Lentil, Radish, Avocado and Fried Potato Salad, my Cauliflower Marbella, or these Vegetables à la Grecque.

Roasted Beetroot with Za’atar and Fried Mint

Earthy beetroot comes alive when paired with this spice blend and the richly refreshing and delicately textural fried mint. This makes a great side dish, or surround it with other small plates for sharing. Recipe by myself.

• 3 medium-large beetroot
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• a pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon sumac
• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, extra
• about 15-20 fresh mint leaves
• salt, to taste

1: Set your oven to 200C/400F. Wash any obvious dirt from the beetroot, and trim off any stems and leaves but leave the beetroot themselves intact. Get three pieces of tinfoil and place a beetroot on each, then drizzle a little of the teaspoon of olive oil over each beetroot and rub it into the skin. Scatter a little salt over, then pull up the foil to enclose each beetroot in their own parcel. Place the foil-wrapped beetroot into a roasting dish and bake for 60 minutes or until they yield tenderly to a sharp knife jabbed into them. If your beetroot are on the smaller side I’d start checking at 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

2: While the beetroot is roasting, combine the teaspoon each of dried thyme and sumac in a small bowl. Toast the teaspoon of sesame seeds in a frying pan until fragrant and just browned (keep a close watch as they burn easily) and carefully tip these seeds into the bowl of thyme and sumac and mix together.

3: Next, pat the mint leaves dry with a paper towel, and heat up the three tablespoons of olive oil in the same pan that you toasted the sesame seeds. Throw in the mint leaves and let them bubble away in the hot oil — first they’ll turn very bright and then they’ll go dark and a little translucent and crisp. At this point, remove the pan from the heat.

4: To serve, slice the roasted beetroot thinly (you can rub the skin from the whole beetroot first but I just left it on) and arrange it on a plate. Sprinkle over the za’atar, then the fried mint leaves, and finally spoon over some of the minty olive oil and scatter over more salt, to taste.

Serves 2-3 as a side dish, or four as part of a more loaded table.

music lately:

Sweet Love by Anita Baker, I’ve been looking for her album Rapture on vinyl for a long time and over the weekend it suddenly appeared in front of me as I flipped through the crates. Let me tell you, there are few purer sources of serotonin than that, and this song is truly a masterclass.

Sketch for Dawn (I) by The Durutti Column, almost maddening in the way it constantly feels like it’s building up to a big sneeze of a drop and instead keeps just hovering out of your reach, but what an exhilarating journey nonetheless.

Bartender by Hed PE, I don’t even have the words to describe how intensely released-in-the-year-2000 this song is from production to lyrics to general vibe; despite these mitigating factors I cannot help but still enjoy it sincerely twenty-something years later. Smart cookies in the audience might recognise the slightly jarring but undeniably adroit interpolation of the coda of Rare Earth’s I Just Want to Celebrate.

Bye Bye, Blackbird, by Liza Minelli from her astonishing Liza with a Z televised concert; this song is just so charming and as for Ms Minnelli, her bone-deep, pugnaciously charismatic star quality simply cannot be overstated. You can try! But it can’t be!