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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.15 71 DINE IN Just Beet It By Mary Welp / Illustration by Carrie Neumayer Here's a vegan dish any carnivore can love. Call me an igmo, but not till I read Marlon James' Booker Prize-winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, did I realize that Rastafarians invented veganism. OK, they did not actually invent it. Advocates of the practice of eating no animal products of any kind have been around since 500 B.C., and probably earlier. Pythagoras was a fan. But the word "vegan" was not trotted out until 1944 — by a Brit woodworker named Donald Watson. However, it pretty much took Bob Mar- ley and the gang to kick veganism on over into popular-culture parlance and practice. But the Rastafarians did not use the term. Rather, they called it "Ital" (derived from the word "vital"), but to call it that here will only lead into a font-nerd spiral, so for purposes of brevity, let me quote from A Brief History of Seven Killings: "Livication and liberation my ass, if I wanted to live in a Victorian novel I at least want men who know how to get a decent haircut." Tat line is spoken by the marvelous charac- ter Nina Burgess, who at the moment in question is fed up with the way that Rasta men make their women fetch food, water and matches. And I slipped it into this column strictly because of how much I want everyone to read Marlon James. But back to veganism. Readers of a certain age may or may not recall that a long while back I wrote a column about what a pain in the palate it is to have a dinner guest announce, "You know I don't eat _________, right?" Which, back in the day, immediately made me want to disguise whatever _________ was and slip it onto the person's dinner plate. My tartest, most dismissive remarks had to do with vegans. Well, karma came and got me and delivered me a vegan son. A teenage vegan son. Multiply annoyance by 100. Make that 365. Until, as with everything else when you're a parent, you just get used to it. You incorporate it into your daily life. You rise to the challenge. But you still don't have to buy soy cheese or Tofurky. What I've had the greatest success with, rather than relying on vegan cookbooks or preachy websites, is rifng on memorable restaurant dishes. Tis does not mean when I'm sitting in Jack Fry's I ask myself, "Man oh man, how could I make this shrimp and grits taste even better by leaving out the seafood, the cream and the butter?" But it does mean that when I have, say, an eggplant dish topped with sharp aged cheese, I will wonder, "How might I make this even tangier, give it more depth of favor?" Maybe an unusual vinegar and a wacky mixture of olives. To give a recent, quite specifc case in point, for me the happiest event in ages in the ever-booming Louisville food scene has been the opening of La Chasse in the Bard- stown Road space previously occupied by Palermo Viejo. Te menu, like the restaurant itself, is small, carefully appointed, authenti- cally bistro. Tis means game meats such as duck and rabbit. (La Chasse = Te Hunt.) But it means, as well, salads and small dishes so well conceived and executed that you'd pretty much want to eat there every night if you could aford to. For me the outstanding dish is the roasted baby beets. Many versions of this salad exist at farm-to- table restaurants throughout our region, and though I have not yet met one I wouldn't order again, La Chasse's wins. Te menu describes it simply as: Roasted Baby Beets Grapefruit, crumbled chèvre, toasted hazel- nuts, Chardonnay basil vinaigrette Simple enough, right? Yet that vinaigrette is a glory and a wonder. It weds all of the other favors. Only — whoops — if you want the dish to be vegan, there goes the goat cheese. Te challenge becomes: How can I make this as awe-inspiring without the mammary glands of a goat? After considerable experimentation, with some batches ending up as borscht, I devised a wee cornucopia of winter holiday colors and favors. Root vegetables! Pomegranates! Citrus! Nuts! I also learned that the best way to deal with beets in a salad is to parboil them, followed by a short roasting and cooling period, and then use a mandoline to slice them. Easy, easy. And pretty. Beet, grapefruit and pomegranate salad with roasted hazelnut pesto 2 medium-sized red beets 2 medium-sized golden beets 1 tablespoon olive oil ½ cup hazelnuts (or pecans) ½ cup basil leaves ½ cup parsley 1 garlic clove ½ cup olive oil 1 ruby grapefruit Seeds from ½ pomegranate Salt and pepper to taste Place the beets in a heavy-bottomed pan and cover them with water. Bring them to a boil and then simmer for approximately 15 minutes, or until they are tender enough to poke a fork into (but not mushy). Drain the beets and let them dry until they are cool enough to cut into quarters. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the quartered beets in a shallow roasting pan, drizzle them with olive oil, and sprinkle them with salt. Roast them for 10 minutes in the oven. Let them cool completely. (You can do this much a day ahead and chill them in the fridge overnight if you want.) Slice them with a mandoline, keep- ing the reds separate from the golds. Roast the nuts in a non-stick skillet over medium heat, then let them cool. Place them, along with the basil, parsley, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, in a blender or food processor. Whir until smooth. If the mixture seems too thick, add a bit of warm water. Peel and slice the grapefruit, taking care to slice the sections into thin segments. To assemble the salad, alternate the beet colors on a platter with a layer of grapefruit in between. Drizzle the fnished layers with the pesto, and go to town scattering the pomegranate seeds. Smoke a splif, put on some reggae and chow down. Kidding about the splif. But I'm not kidding about Marlon James. Read him.