Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans

Early on this sweltering June morning, the first real day of summer vacation, you could find my Malcolm in a shady room, watching Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress. We all watched it together, some time ago, and he liked it so much he asked me to get it again. (The film is best-known, probably, as the inspiration for George Lucas’ screenplay for Star Wars: A New Hope.)

I was on my way out the door, and I just stopped, and sat with Malcolm and watched it again. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. The film is moving, on so many levels. In the very first scene, we see two peasants, backs to us, walking away. They’re highly animated, squabbling and quarreling, bickering about plans for a future they have absolutely no control over. And then a wounded samurai careens into the frame from a crazed angle, followed by men on horseback who stab him, repeatedly, in an oddly beautifully choreographed dance. (I apologize in advance for using the word “beautiful” hundreds of times.) The peasants are caught between warring clans, and they’re captured and forced to bury the dead and dig for gold. During an uprising they escape, and they find a bar of gold hidden in a log of wood. And then they meet Toshiro Mifune, and they spend the rest of the film walking; following him, running from him, racing back to him.

They’re traveling with hundreds of bars of hidden gold and a princess disguised as a mute peasant. They walk through ghostly bamboo forests, slanting rain, stands of bare trees in the fog, soldier’s spears and flags, they thread their way through one beautiful vertical arrangement after another. They enter the frame unexpectedly, from any side at any time, in stark contrast to the standard left to right movement we’ve come to expect from a hollywood film. They creep, muttering, in one direction and dash, screaming, back again in the other. And they walk in and out of stories.

Each time they stop a small tale unfolds, a small perfect interaction between them or the people they encounter. They start the film as fools, comic and ridiculous, but the thought of gold makes them nearly imbecilic; they can’t control themselves and they stumble and flail, and say things they aren’t supposed to say, and fall all over themselves trying to escape from their poor tangled fate. We laugh at them, but we empathize with them as well. They’re poorer than poor, and they’re caught in a violent struggle that holds no meaning for them, but could destroy their lives.

The princess (Misa Uehara) is also caught in this struggle. She, too, is bound by the history of her family to behave in a certain way. She’s pretending to be mute, but her expressions as she sees a world she’s never seen before–outside of the castle, with people who behave unpredictably because they don’t know who she is–her face as it lights up at the sight of ordinary people doing ordinary things, is wonderful to behold.

In the midst of all the death and violence, all the scheming and subterfuge, all the struggle to keep power and wealth, the travelers happen upon a fire ceremony. Everybody sings and dances as one, as they throw logs into a huge bonfire. Our friends are forced to throw all of their gold into the fire. The peasants are beside themselves with grief and worry, but the princess looks freed, transcendent, as she joins in the dance and sings the odd, dark, existential song. She recalls it later after they’ve been captured, and she sings it in a beautiful scene that places all of the beautiful and ridiculous drama of the movie, and of our lives, too, into a strange, somber, hopeful sort of perspective.

The life of a man
Burn it with the fire
The life of an insect
Throw it into the fire
Ponder and you’ll see
The world is dark
And this floating world is a dream.

I missed a few scenes because I was making the boys’ breakfast. When I returned, the princess sat in a wild tangled bower of bushes, smiling with a sort of happy wisdom, as at something she’d never seen or noticed before. I said, “Malcolm, why is she smiling.” He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the birds.”

This is a summery roasted vegetable dish. It combines new potatoes, beautiful red and golden beets, white beans, shallots, olives, capers, herbs and lemon for a bright roasty flavor. It would be nice with a sauce, like a pecan tarator sauce or a spicy tomato sauce. It makes a meal with some sort of grain–farro, millet, quinoa, rice and a salad, and it would make a nice side dish as well.

Here’s the main theme from Hidden Fortress. The soundtrack is spectacular.

3 or 4 beets, peeled, sliced in half, and then sliced into 1/4-inch slices
4 or 5 new potatoes, scrubbed and sliced in wedges about 1/2-inch wide at the wide end
1 can white beans, rinsed and well-drained
1 plump clove garlic–pierce the skin with a knife so it doesn’t explode
1 shallot, peeled, cut in quarters, and cut into 1/8-inch slices
1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup olives, pitted and chopped in half
3 t capers
1 lemon, cut into quarters
4 or 5 fresh sage leaves
1 sprig of thyme, leaves only
2 or 3 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
2 ++ T butter (or more olive oil)
salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 450. Combine everything in a large roasting pan, trying to keep it as close to a single layer as possible. Roast for about an hour, until everything is crispy outside and soft in. Turn everything from time to time, scraping the bottom with a spatula. If the pan dries out, add another dash of olive oil or butter.

When everything is as soft and crispy as you like it, squeeze the garlic out of its skin, mash it, and stir it into the vegetables. Squeeze the lemons over, or add some fresh lemon juice. If the dish is very dry, you can splash in some wine or water, and use this to scrape all the nice roasty bits from the bottom of the pan. If you have fresh basil, stir that in as well. Serve with farro or couscous or millet and a salad, or as a side to some more complicated meal.