Sunday, December 17, 2006

Blood Orange and Roasted Beet Salad

Copyright 2006 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
4 golden beets
2 blood oranges (save juice)
2 cups watercress
1 oz. goat cheese
1 T sugar
1 T dijon mustard
1 T extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Start by roasting your beets. Place them in a roasting pan and coat with olive oil and coarse salt and pepper. Roast in oven until fork tender, about 1 hour. Remove and let cool. Then remove the skin on each beet and cut into quarters.

Section your blood oranges
and squeeze out remaining juice into a small bowl. Set orange slices aside. In bowl with juice, add sugar, mustard, olive oil and a pinch of salt and mix well for dressing.

Toss watercress and beets in dressing. Plate and add orange slices and goat cheese crumbs. Serve immediately.

Makes two servings as a starter salad or one serving for an entree salad.

Serve with glass of Chardonnay.

TIPS: I use goat cheese in this salad because it's creamy and mild. But if you like cheese with more punch, then feel free to use your favorite crumbling cheese like feta or gargonzola. For the beets, golden beets make a nice color contrast to the red blood orange. But you can use regular red beets as well. (When peeling off the skin on beets, it's helpful to wear plastic gloves to avoid the beet coloring staining your fingertips.)

MAKE IT A MEAL: This recipe can work nicely as an entree when all the ingredients are paired with flank steak slices. It's like those Vietnamese beef salads. You can toss the flank steak slices with the salad or just lay the slices on the bed of salad. The orange flavor will match nicely with red meat.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is truly beautiful. I am stunned that you are single with all this talent and contagious smile.

Single Guy Ben said...

Oh gee, thanks! Now you're making me blush like a beet. ;-)

Anonymous said...

I made the roasted beet and blood orange salad tonight, thanks to your tip on Chowhound. The salad was positively amazing! I served the salad with the beets still warm, and it was divine. I NEVER (ever) use beets when I cook, but I plan to do so more often, especially if it is roasted. What's so great is this salad is so easy to make!

I plan to borrow some of your other recipe ideas. I showed my Mom your site tonight and we looked at some of the recipes together. She needs to cut back on the salt and cholesterol, so we figured out how to substitute some of the ingredients in some of the dishes.

Thanks again for the tip on the beet and blood orange salad and your other wonderful recipes.

Pamela
Los Angeles

Single Guy Ben said...

Hi Pamela, glad to hear there's another roasted beet convert out there. I was talking with a friend just last night about boiling vs. roasting, and I was saying how I feel boiling always just sucks out all the tastes of the beet while roasting retains the natural taste plus adds a bit of smokiness. (BTW, I have to watch my cholesterol too, which is why I rarely use butter in my recipes, except for dessert, which I rarely make anyway.) Thanks for the feedback!

Anonymous said...

One of my husband's coworkers has a blood orange tree. This year it gave him a bumper crop, so he sent my boy home with about 4 pounds of oranges. I'm determined to use them all and I remembered seeing a recipe for blood orange and beet salad, so I looked it up on Google. Your recipe looked like the tastiest and easiest, so I went with it. I was not disappointed.

I like to make a similar salad (although that one uses persimmons, pomegranate seeds and toasted pecans), so I sort of combined the two ideas. I used spinach instead of watercress, and added some red onion. I also threw in some mint leaves, 'cause I'm growing mint in a little pot and the fuckers are threatening to take over. Both additions worked out really well.

More than anything else, I'd like to say that the salad dressing idea is amazing. I've always just thrown olive oil in with the salad, but the mustard gives it an extra kick which is totally awesome. So thanks for that.

I think I'm going to have to bookmark this site in case I need another random recipe. I like your style.

-Kat

PS: I also live in SF. If you ever see a chick with blue hair running around the Civic Center market, that's probably me.

PPS: If they start selling dragonfruit again, take my word for it: DON'T. It looks awesome and it sounds awesome, but it's not. It's a cactus. Sort of like a cross between pear and kiwi, only without any flavor. Try something else instead.

PPPS: If you can figure out what to do with a quince, please post it. I keep wanting to get one, but they're supposed to be really sour.

Single Guy Ben said...

Kat, welcome to my blog! Your version of the salad sounds amazing, it's always fun to experiment with recipes! Oh, and don't worry, I will avoid the dragon fruit. It definitely is pretty but I agree it's not that great eating!

I love the idea of quince, but I agree it sounds like a tough pear. That may be my biggest challenge to come up with a recipe using that. Keep checking! ;-)

Thanks for reading!