At the Farmies Market the other day James came across some Yellow Baby Beetroots. They have the most gorgeous colour and flavour and are rather easy to cook indeed. With all the hot weather we've been on a salad crusade and these seemed like the perfect salad addition. Even though I know we are all sick to fucking death of seeing Beetroot, Quinoa and Goat's Cheese Salad (along with spring risottos, bruschetta and pesto linguini) we happened to have Meredith goat's cheese and quinoa in the house, so we thought we'd give old Donna Hay a run for her money.
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| Skin the beetroots after boiling them for the beautiful orange colour |
James boiled the beets until soft (around 45mins to an hour) then cut them into quarters and braised them in a combination of water, white and red wine vinegar with honey, mustard, salt and pepper until they had begun to take on the flavours, this is rather personal- some people like it less acidic and more earthy (James) and others (Ruby) visa versa so keep trying them until you get the combination you like/ flip a coin. After they were cooked we tossed them through some chopped mint and parsley. I'm a big herb fan and I cannot encourage this step enough, the salad is suddenly fresh and full of spring.
Quinoa (or keenwaah as I like to say in my Prruudee and Truudde voice) can be quite the tricky devil, I have found the solution to the sometimes bitter flavour is to soak and then rinse it before you cook it for at least an hour. Then use the same technique and measurements as you would for rice (around 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water) and let it steam out until it's absorbed all the water. For salads we put the cooked quinoa in the oven to crisp up at 180 degrees celsius for 10 minutes or so. This gets rid of the waterlogged texture that can make your salad all soggy.
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| Beautiful Meredith goat's cheese- never mind the price it is cheese textured gold |
Because we had them lying around we also chucked in some broad beans. Broad beans are James' favourite, I am still not sure what all the fuss is about (especially with all the peeling that has to be done- take the shells off, peel them once, then peel them again!). But they were rather tasty in the salad I had to admit. We also threw in a few toasted walnuts for good measure and crunch. We used our normal run of the mill dressing- 4 parts olive oil to 1 part lemon juice, 1 part vinegar, 1/2 part honey (or to taste), 1/4 part mustard, salt, pepper and a clove of garlic smashed and left to macerate in the dressing bottle.
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| Salad, Potatoes and some refreshing lemony water in our NEW JUG! |
I was going to try and pretend that we were having a healthy 'Salad only' dinner, but to be truthful I also demanded CHIPS which really means roasted potatoes (this time we used Kipflers, good choice indeed) cut into chippy shape with copious amounts of salt and rosemary. Because even though the salad was deeelicious there isn't much that can't be improved by some scrumptious potatoes. Wouldn't you agree?
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