The next step on our week-long food adventure with our visiting friend was lunch. We put together a relatively easy-to-make salad that just happens to have several elements. The feature is the delicious and beautiful Chioggia beets, but the blend of tasty-on-their-own elements makes it one of the best salads we make.
For the salad (serves 3)
3 medium Chioggia beets
1 avocado, cubed
8 oz baby arugula
4 oz goat cheese
¼ cup craisins
¼ cup toasted walnuts
2 tbl red onion, diced
For the dressing
1 ½ tsp Dijon mustard
1 ½ tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbl maple syrup
2 tbl extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
We’ve experimented with peeling the beets before and after roasting (400F for about 50 minutes) and decided that they’re easier to peel post-roasting. We still oil, salt, and pepper them before putting them in the oven, wrapped in foil. After peeling, we cube them and put them in the fridge for a few hours. When we’re ready to assemble the salad, we pull them out, mix together the dressing (which you can certainly do several hours ahead of time), cube the avocado, and toss.
The pairing—if you can actually call it a pairing—was 2010 Martinelli Pinot Noir Moonshine Ranch. I’m not a big fan of pairing wine with vinegar-based dressing, so this wasn’t so much a pairing as a recognition of something that I just wanted to drink. Gretchyn and Scott drank Camarena Margaritas instead.
And now that the rain has stopped, a swim before dinner.
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