Dear Reader, this beetroot salad is one of those salads that I swear tastes like you ordered it in a restaurant but only takes 5 minutes to put together! Roasted beetroot is paired with a creamy chive ricotta, fresh figs, pistachios and truffle honey. This is heaven on a plate and if you're a beetroot or beet fan this is a pushy recipe!
The combination of earthy, sweet beetroot, creamy ricotta, tasty chives and soft figs is an unbeatable combination. And once you add honey or truffle honey it takes it up a notch and honestly I could not stop making this salad and we ate it three nights in a row. The whole idea for this came from when I was moving and packing things up in boxes. I found two items that I forgot about and the first was an amazingly aromatic truffle essence from France (that smells pretty much like the strongest truffle). I also found a wonderful truffle honey from Italy with shavings of white truffle. It was a gift from the lovely Tania from when she worked at the Italian importer. It was years old but stored in the back of the cupboard so it was well preserved and if anything I think this slightly intensified it with the additional length of time. Let's called this aged honey shall we? ;)
To complete the dish I added some bright green pistachios that I bought from a Middle Eastern grocery store. They're skinned and slivered so that they provide not only a beautiful bright green colour but a nice crunch, even without toasting. Sometimes when I'm feeling time-poor I avail myself of the shrink-wrapped already roasted beetroot that you can buy at the shops. It's ready cooked, lasts for ages in the fridge and is super handy to have when you need to make a simple salad and need vegetables that will keep.
This beet salad is the first recipe I made in our new house (apart from some homemade food for Teddy) and since it was hot, the weather called for some salad. While I absolutely love the rest of the house and garden, this is a crazy kitchen. Somehow I didn't think that I could get a kitchen smaller than our previous apartment's one but this one is. It is also the original Federation style kitchen so it sort of looks like a medieval wench would be stirring a steaming cauldron, a mob cap barely holding in her tendrils of hair.
There's no bench space and the sinks well they're just bizarre with a small round gold sink and a shallow sink that serves as an inefficient drying rack and they're also counterintuitively designed. It's such a source of anxiety for me and if I manage to turn out anything in the oven or make anything complicated it will be a minor miracle. Currently I am just counting down the days until we get to renovate the kitchen. In the meantime please, please make this salad if you're a beetroot fan and also please understand if this blog turns into a salad blog (ok it won't haha).
So tell me Dear Reader, do you forget about ingredients that you buy? What is your kitchen like?
Reader Comments
Loading comments...Add Comment