Sunday, February 1, 2009

Beet Salad with Feta and Mustard Dressing


Salty feta, sweet beets and spicy mustard are a perfect combination for the dead of winter, brightened with some fresh dill. This salad is good by itself or on a bed of salad greens. We used red beets, which are beautiful, but if pink feta creeps you out, golden beets would be delicious too.

6 medium-sized beets
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons spicy mustard
Salt
Pepper
1 lb feta, cubed or crumbled
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill

Scrub beets, halve any large ones, and cover with water in a large stock pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 40 minutes to an hour, until tender. Once the beets are cool enough to handle, peel them, and chop them into 1-inch cubes.

Mix together olive oil, apple cider vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over the beets, stir well to combine, and top with feta and dill. Serve slightly warm, room temperature, or chilled, either by itself or on top of a bed of salad greens.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This looks great, especially with the addition of acid (vinegar) and dill. Yum!

We do a variation which uses roasted beets. I find there to be a slight advantage, because the beets don't get as mushy.

Basically roast off a few beets (however many you want). An easy way to do this, is wrap your beets in foil, and put them in your toaster or oven @ 450 for an hour. Chop beets in to cubes and chill. Add Newman's Balsamic dressing, just enough to lightly coat. Add feta, toasted walnuts, and thin slices of red or sweet onion. Salt and pepper to taste. Yum!

BTW, I just tried your massaged kale salad last night and it was great. I bought some strangely tender kale from the farmers market. It could have been russian.

It reminded me of the raw salad that lots of vegans are fond of. Basically instead of the olive oil you just massage the avocado over the leaves. Add lemon and salt, tomatoes, carrots, whatever you like. It really makes the salad quite substantial. Good stuff.

Thank you for the great blog.

L

eliz said...

i make something like this, but i use cilantro instead of dill (due to my dill aversion).
also on the beet topic? i made some super simple borscht the other day (roasted beets and garlic, pureed with some stock, salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon), but before i cooled it i stirred in some chevre (which incorporated into the body of the soup). it was SO LOVELY. i snipped some chives on top and added a dollop of greek yogurt to pretend like it wasn't the dead of winter.
this is the time of year in massachusetts where i can't believe how good i was at eating only local, seasonal veggies this summer (i only bought one carrot and two tomatoes not from my farmshare or a farmers market!), because on the side i had a big salad of out-of-season greens and oranges. winter breaks me.

Incident Alice said...

I made this tonight and... well...I'm still thinking about it. So good. The dill was genius!

I Heart Kale said...

Thanks, everybody, glad you liked it! We've got another beet salad recipe in the pipeline for all your winter veggie consumption needs (especially you rock stars eating mostly-local in cold climes. Way to kick ass!).

L, welcome and thanks for visiting! We'll have to try an avocado dressing on our massaged kale salad sometime.

Anaka said...

This is my new favorite recipe. It is also great without the dill and with some honey if you want something a little sweater. Either way, I love it. Thank you so much! Hope you guys are well!

I Heart Kale said...

Good to know--I bet it's delicious with honey, and we're much more likely to have honey lying around than dill!