Recipe - Fruit and Root Salad with Citrus Champagne Vinaigrette

A beet is technically a root right? Whatever it is, it's my new favorite vegetable. Its sweet earthy flavor combined with that perfect soft/firm texture gives it its own signature place in the realm of culinary creativity. One of the easiest ways to incorporate beets into your diet is to throw them into whatever salad you happen to like. And as one of a few, elite superfoods, how can you resist their antioxidant goodness?

Since strawberries were on sale this week ($2 per pound!) let's make a beet and strawberry salad. We'll throw in a little of the blue cheese that was on sale last week. I will leave the amounts of each ingredient up to you.

Ingredients:
Lettuce (I like arugula and spinach)
Strawberries
Beet, sliced
Blue cheese
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1-2 tsp Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar (Trader Joe's)
Splash of lemon juice
Salt & Pepper to taste

1. Get out your favorite bowl and put in as much lettuce as you need. This salad was just for me so I used about 2 handfuls.

2. Next rinse and dry your strawberries. I slice them fairly thick so they give the salad a little weight.

3. Next our friend the beet. You can buy canned beets or make them yourself, which is much easier than it sounds. Just cut off the top and bottom of each beet, peel with a peeler and boil for about 40 minutes until easily pierced by a knife. You can serve them hot or refrigerate them and slice when cool.

I just cut off one slice for this salad. Again, to give the salad a little weight I kept my pieces fairly thick. Personally I prefer tiny wedges, but cut them however you like!

4. I used one slice of blue cheese and kept the crumbles fairly large. They will continue to break up as you eat it so don’t make the pieces too tiny.

5. Finally the dressing. I absolutely love this vinegar and have been putting it in everything lately, from salad dressing to marinade. The bottle even says you can make a spritzer with it but I haven’t tried that yet.

Add your olive oil to a bowl and whisk in the vinegar so that it emulsifies. Then add a few drops of lemon juice. It’s pretty powerful stuff so don’t use too much or you’ll lose the orange flavor of the dressing. Finally a little salt & pepper.

6. Dress. Toss. Serve.

7. Mmmmmmm!

Recipe - Baby bok choy topped with a spinach, carrot, garlic hash

Served aside acorn squash filled with spicy Italian sausage.

This dish takes me back to college when my roommate Rachel and I would cook together. We loved the savory flavor of sausage paired with delicious Winter squash. "Sausage and Squish" became a regular favorite and remains one to this day!

Ingredients:
1 medium to large sized acorn or delicata squash
1 package of spicy Italian sausage (not in links)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Cut the squash in half and place each half cut-side-down in a baking dish with 1/2 inch of water. Bake for 35 minutes or until easily pierced by a knife (be careful not to overcook the squash). The sausage will only take 10 minutes or so, so you can do this at the very end.

Next the greens! I was inspired to make this side dish after a delicious anniversary dinner with Barry at a restaurant in Charlottesville, Bang!

.

Ingredients:

15 - 20 baby bok choy (sold at most asian grocery stores)

1 cup of raw spinach, minced

1 carrot

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Splash of beef broth

1 tsp soy sauce

Salt & pepper to taste

.

Begin with the hash since you can re-heat it if needed.

.

1. Peel and dice the carrot and cook in a steamer basket or boiling water until soft. Mash with a fork and set aside.

2. Next, heat a splash of olive oil in a sautee pan and toss in the garlic. After a minute or so add the spinach, stirring frequently to prevent burning. When the spinach is a vibrant green you can mix in the mashed carrot. Next, add 1 tsp of soy sauce and pour in the beef broth a little bit at a time so that the consistency is somewhere between oatmeal and cream of potato soup. That's not very specific... just add as much as you like! You want to make a sauce that you can pour over the bok choy while still maintaining some texture. You can set it aside at this stage, or blend it in a food processor to get a creamier texture. Season with a little salt & pepper to taste.

3. Wash the bok choy very carefully. They often have a lot of sand in them so I like to use the nozzle attached to most kitchen sinks to really clean them. Try to shake off as much water as you can so you don't make a mess when you sautee these bad boys.

4. Heat 1 Tbs olive oil over medium heat. Add the bok choy and toss regularly to keep them from getting too wilted on any one side. Keep cooking them until they're tender but firm. If they're taking too long you can put a lid on top and steam them quickly.

Now back to the main dish!

.

2. Heat 1 Tbs of olive oil in a sautee pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and break up with a spoon/spatula/whatever utensil your heart desires. Sautee until cooked through.

3. Remove the squash from the oven and flip them over, cut-side-up. Put each one on a plate.

.

4. Pour the hot sausage and oil directly into the squash cavity. The dish already has so much flavor it won't need any other seasoning but you could add salt & pepper if you like. Or if you're like Barry, a little Sriracha sauce goes well with everything!

.

5. Place 8-10 bok choy on each plate so that they're all oriented the same direction. Pour the spinach hash in a single line across all of them.

.

6. Serve and enjoy!