Friday Bites #2: Beets!!

Until about 2 years ago, I viewed the beets as an artificially colored vegetable that comes out of a can and is usually cut with funny ridges to resemble a potato chip. Beets always looked appaulingly bright, like sweet and sour chicken. It wasn’t until eating the beet salad at Lucy’s Table, that I discovered how amazing beets really are. Inspired by this eye-opening eating experience, I attempted last week to recreate the same salad as best as I could from memory.

In the end, I’m quite pleased with this salad. It’s very easy to put together, and packs all the fresh sweet flavor of a fresh, roasted root. The below instructions are more of a guide then specific instructions.

Ingredients:
1 firm but ripe pear
4 beets (it’s fun to mix golden and red)
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Shallots
Goat cheese (though I noticed that lots of people tend to pair beets with feta which I’m sure would also be delicious. I’m just not a huge fan of feta).

· Remove the greens from the beets. Roast the beets until tender, about 1 hour at 400F. A good way to do this I think is to put them between two layers of foil, drizzled with a little olive oil and salt.

· Let beets cool. Peel the skin off your beets (it really just melts off after the roasting), and slice width wise. Make similar sized slices of the pear.

· Whisk together in a 1:1 portions olive oil and balsamic and 1 finely chopped shallot.
Arrange the beets and pears as desired, and drizzle the dressing. Crumble goat cheese on
top.

Now in the future, I would consider adding slices of blood orange to this, but that amount of amazing color might be too much! Also, I’m pretty sure that a clever person could find just the right lettuce to put under all of this. As well, I’m pretty sure that the dressing could be livened up, but this was so delicious and simple.

If anyone has tried a beet salad of their own, I would love to hear about your success and recommendations.