Beet Salad.....

Beet Salad, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

Also known as the best beet salad ever! This turned out so well. It is a modified version of Beets with Lemon, Cilantro, and Mint from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.

The recipe calls for cooked beets, the zest and juice of a lemon, diced red onion, parsley, cilantro, mint, ground coriander, olive oil, salad greens, and oil cured olives. We followed the recipe except for a few modifications.

We cooked the beets in our usual way: peeled, cut into small pieces, put in tin foil with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and baked at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes. We also baked some carrots along with the beets. We made the dressing according to the recipe, but left out the parsley. Once the beets and carrots were cooked, we mixed them with the dressing. Instead of salad greens, we put the beets and carrots over purslain. Purslain looks kind of like thin succulent leaves and tastes kind of like a cross between arugula and cactus--but really it has a taste all of its own.

We were going to leave the olives out because of the added balsamic vinegar, but decided to add them at the end (after this picture was taken). We used kalamata olives instead of oil cured olives. The salad was already really good, but the olives made it out of this world. The baby beets from the farmer's market were so tender and tasty and the purslain worked so well with all of the other flavors. This salad was a real winner. It kind of reminded me of some of the salad dishes we have had a Millennium (which makes me wonder if lemon and mint is the secret to some of their salads).