This is a warm weather favorite of mine.  I love beets and using golden beets instead of the magenta ones are much neater to cook with.  You don’t  have to worry about the red stains on your fingers and cutting boards.  The earthiness of beets complements any pungent cheese.  Here, I have crumbled the predictable goat cheese, but also snuck in some stinky stilton I had in the fridge.  My BF hates bleu cheese, which is one of my favorites, but I can sneak it into a salad like this in small doses or into my all beef herbed burgers.   

 

I happened to go to the Hollywood Farmers’ Market that morning and was able to score some really good greens which included the following:  frisee, wild arugula, which is much stronger and pungent than baby arugula, golden beets, and even a romanesco cauliflower, and blood oranges.  How I love spring.

 

GOLDEN BEET SALAD  serves 4-6

 

INGREDIENTS:

 

3 large golden beets

1 tbs olive oil for roasting (optional)

 

1 blood orange-  peeled with a sharp knife, sliced thin and quartered

1 head of frisee (not to be confused with endive, it is much finer and lighter in color)

handful of wild arugula or baby arugula

 

crumbled bleu cheese like stilton or roquefort

goat cheese

 

toasted nuts (optional) such as pecans or walnuts

 

fresh ground pepper

 

shallot vinaigrette

 

 

Preheat oven to 400˚.

 

The beets can be roasted ahead of time as well to allow for cooling time for a dish like this.  I like to roast beets on a Sunday and eat them throughout the week by making dishes such as this salad, or a thin sliced beet carapaccio, or just tossed onto a main course salad with some grilled chicken.  

 

Rinse and scrub the beets.  Cut off the greens.  Wrap them in an aluminum foil pouch.  Seal the pouch so it is somewhat conformed to their shape.  Place in the oven on the middle rack for a 45 minutes.  Check them for tenderness with a fork.  You don’t want them too mushy but also want them to be tender.  This cooking method seals in the sweetness and flavor and is rather easy to do.  Some people will add a tbs of olive oil on the  beets prior to cooking.  I skip this step.  

 

Allow the beets to cool a bit and gently slide off the peels.  They come off very easily.  Let them cool completely before slicing them thin for the salad.

 

While the beets are in the oven, you can rinse greens and break off the frisee from core into small pieces. Spin in a salad spinner or use a clean kitchen cloth and place a thin layer of greens on it.  Gently roll up the towel and unroll and repeat till most excess moisture has been removed.

 

Peel and cut the orange.  Make the shallot vinaigrette and set aside.

 

The salad can be plated or layered in a bowl.  In this photo I layered the frisee first, piled some arugula in the center and arranged the sliced golden beet around the arugula.  The orange slices acted as a colorful garnish.  Then I sprinkled a small amount of goat cheese on the beets and the stilton on the frisee.  Right before serving, I dressed it with the home made shallot vinaigrette.  Be sure not to overpower the salad with cheese.  It’s much too easy to do.

 

A perfect plateful of spring.  Oops.  There’s a lemon seed in that photo.  Well, at least you know it wasn’t store bought dressing.