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!