New Food Cookbook Chapter: Root Vegetables

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Colored Carrots

• Also known as: Red Carrots, Yellow Carrots, White Carrots, Belgium White Carrots, Purple Carrots, Maroon Carrots
• Origin and cultivation: original carrot was probably purple and was cultivated over 5,000 years ago
  
• Availability: summer at farmers markets and some supermarkets
  
• Appearance: white carrots lack pigment; purple (also called maroon) carrots get their color from anthocyanin pigments; yellow carrots get their color from xanthophylls, a carotenoid; red carrots get their color from lycopene, a carotenoid, along with the same pigments in orange carrots which are beta-carotene and alpha carotene
  
• Flavor: like carrots, the colors contribute little flavor
  
• Trivia: Romans used white and purple carrots. By the 14th century in Europe, a variety of colored carrots were being grown including purple, red, yellow, and white, but not orange. Orange carrots didn't exist until the 16th century, where patriotic Dutch people bred them in honor of the royal House of Orange. Since the 1990s, because of the hype surrounding antioxidant properties of anthocyanins in purple carrots, they are being grown on a more industrial scale
• Recipes:

Colored Carrot "Fettuccini" with Tarragon Pesto

White Carrot Ginger Soup with Chervil and Crispy Prosciutto

Colored Carrot Couscous and Pan Seared Day Boat Scallops

Purple Carrot Cake alla Romanesca

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Blue Potatoes

• Also known as: Purple Potatoes or Peruvian Purple Potatoes
  
• Origin and cultivation: originally cultivated by ancient Andean Indian civilizations; introduced in North America in the 1970s
  
• Appearance: blue color is from anthocyanin pigments
  
• Flavor: like potatoes, blue color contributes little flavor
  
• Trivia: blue sweet potatoes also exist, often called Okinawa sweet potatoes
  
• Recipes:

Scalloped Blue Potatoes with Blue Cheese

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Celeriac

• Also known as: Celery Root or Knob Celery
  
• Origin and cultivation: a special variety of celery that is grown for the root rather than the stalks, has been cultivated in Europe for hundreds of years
  
• Availability: year-round
  
• Appearance: big ugly knobby root that is a little bigger than a softball, with a dirty brown colored skin
  
• Flavor: has a nice celery and parsley flavor and can be eaten raw or cooked
  
• Trivia: unpopular only because it is ugly before it is peeled
  
• Recipes:

Celeriac Soup with Leeks and Bacon

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Golden Beets

• Also known as: Yellow Beets or Yellow Beetroot
  
• Origin and cultivation: cultivated for centuries in Europe
  
• Availability: year-round
  
• Appearance: like a beet, only yellow, the color is from betaxanthin pigment
  
• Flavor: sweeter flavor than red beets
  
• Trivia: In Europe, a variety of yellow beets were used as animal fodder which led to prejudice that yellow beets were for animals while red were for people
  
• Recipes:

Golden Borscht with Goji Berries and Sour Cream