Tag Archive for 'candied walnuts'

Almost spring salad with honey roast garlic lemonette

Published
by
marc
on April 6, 2008
in Appetizer, Salad and Vegetable
. 8 Comments

Beet, apple and blue goat cheese salad with honey roast garlic lemonette

I’ve been craving spring for weeks now, but the weather around here has been a tease at best. Yesterday was the first Saturday with the slightest semblance of spring, so I headed up to the Union Square Greenmarket in hopes of finding asparagus, ramps, and maybe even some fiddleheads…

Not surprisingly, I was disappointed with the same old root veggies that the vendors have been hawking all winter, but the sprout vendor seemed to have an unusually large selection of sprouts, and I found a delightful bleu goat cheese. My mind was already assembling the beginnings of a schizophrenic salad, dreaming of a day soon when the stalls will be overflowing with tender green goodness.

Field cress, Miner lettuce, and MizunaSo it’s Sunday, gloomy and cold again. On goes the oven and in go a head of aging garlic I had sitting around, and a couple beets. Meanwhile my mind is being tantalized by the baby greens in the fridge and some bright yellow lemons. Torn between a winter salad and spring salad, I came to a delicious compromise.

A layer of sweet roast beets with a layer of crisp juicy apple topped with some mizuna, cress and miner lettuce that are dressed in a mellow garlic lemonette (lemon+vinaigrette) all topped with some salty barnyardy bleu goat cheese and some crunchy candied walnuts. Wow, that was a mouthful, but so is the flavor of this salad:-)

for roasting
1 beet washed and wrapped in foil
1 head garlic, tops chopped off, drizzled with EVOO and wrapped in foil

for salad
1/2 apple peeled cored and mandolined into “o”s (leave them stuck together to keep them from turning brown)
2 C baby greens (I used mizuna, field cress and miner lettuce)
bleu goat cheese
candied walnuts
fresh ground black pepper

for dressing
1 clove roast garlic mashed
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1/4 tsp honey
1/4 tsp kosher salt (add a little more if you feel it needs it)
fresh ground black pepper

Put the foil wrapped beet(s) and garlic on a baking sheet in a 375 degree oven. The garlic will be done in about 35 minutes, but the beets will need at least an hour (or until you can stick a knife all the way through).

Whisk all the dressing ingredients together. Peel the beet and slice into 1/8″ thick slices. Dress the beets with enough dressing to coat.

To assemble the salad, just put down 3 pieces of beet on a plate, put 1 or 2 slices of apple on top. Lightly dress the greens with some of the dressing (you won’t need it all), and place a handful of greens on top of the beets and apple. Top with some crumbled bleu goat cheese, candied walnuts and some fresh ground pepper.

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