Sometimes the simplest recipes are the best. When I have top notch ingredients, I usually want to do as little to them as possible, gobbling them up with barely any cooking.
My daily lunch last week is the perfect example. It was beyond simple, and inspired by some baby beets I got at the Farmer’s Market. I love beets, but the problem is that here in Italy they usually let them grow to be too big. I like my beets small, about golf ball sized. Not the swollen baseballs that usually show up. So when I saw a bunch of pint sized beets, I grabbed them up right away.
Once I got them home, I wrapped each one in tin foil and roasted them in the oven for about an hour. That way, I had beets, ready to go, for lunch the entire week.
I also bought an outrageously expensive piece of blue cheese at the market. There is one shepherd who brings his sheep milk cheeses to the market. His best cheese is Conciato di San Vittorio, a pastured sheep’s milk cheese that is encrusted with about 20 wild herbs and spices. Lately he’s been experimenting with making this into a blue cheese. Mission accomplished! It’s the most incredible, crumbly rich cheese you can imagine. The herbs infuse it with scents of fennel, marjoram, and other wild grasses. I could only afford a tiny slice, but it was perfect crumbled atop my baby beets.
With such special ingredients I also had to make sure my olive oil was the best. And luckily I’d just received a bottle of Poggio Lamentano organic olive oil. My friend Ari, from Zingermans‘ put me in touch with the owner, who kindly sent me this bottle. Although we make our own olive oil, which I love, I’m always happy to taste oil from others, especially when it comes so highly recommended. I’ve learned to trust Ari’s judgement over the years, and have learned much about quality and specifically olive oil from him. So when he says to eat something, I do it. And for all of you who are always asking me about what olive oil to use, I can definitely recommend not only this olive oil, but any of the ones available at Zingermans
The last touch on my salad was a quick swirl of balsamic and that was lunch. Easy, simple and beyond delicious. As long a you pay attention to your ingredients, that is.
beet salad + blue cheese
Serves 4
8 medium sized beets
1 cup crumbled sheeps milk blue cheese*
extra virgin olive oil
good quality balsamic vinegar
sea salt
*The cheese I used was encrusted with wild herbs, which I left on the crust. It really did add another dimension to the salad, so you might want to sprinkle a bit of fennel or marjoram on top as well.
Preheat oven to 350F/180C
Wash the beets and wrap each one in tin foil. Place on an oven tray and roast for about an hour.
Take the beets out and when they have cooled enough to handle, gently slip the skins off.
To assemble the salad:
Thinly slice the beets and lay them on a platter.
Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic, and season with salt.
Crumble the cheese and sprinkle on top.
Enjoy!
Love this, it’s true…….less is more when the ingredients are excellent!
wow!! great salade….I will put in my recipe book!!
I see from the picture that you are running out of balsamic vinegar…
I will send it to you !!
silvia sesto senso
Ah Silivia….you can see how much I love it!!!
You’re so mean ….. seriously jealous 🙂
Arlyne
wonderful! but why do you wrap the beets individually?
Hmmm…..because I read to do it this way years ago, and that’s the way I’ve always done it? I think this way they steam and retain moisture, while roasting at the same time.
I’ve made a similar salad to yours but with bits of goat cheese. Beets are easy to grow but they take their time growing. I’m currently growing golden beets and red beets. The blue cheese sounds fantastic. Got to try it.
I want to try and grow beets again! We tried ages ago, before we had improved our soil. It’s now much less clay like, and so I think the beets will do much better.
I’ve read that if you add sand to clay, it gets rid of the clay.
I wish I could have joined you Elizabeth. In our house, I’m the only beet eater…and I simply adore beets with blue cheese. The blue cheese you bought looks totally amazing; we just have to treat ourselves once in a while otherwise life would be not quite as much fun!
Well, just roast up a batch for yourself, and indulge while no one is looking.
Of course I make this salad with goat cheese but can someone explain to me why it would have never occured to me to try blue instead? Sigh. So merci for the millionth time. And hooray for a shout out for Zingerman’s, I go every time I am home visiting my Mom and Sis in Ann Arbor. 🙂 I can attest that the Maussane olive oil on his site is amazing too. If it is good enough for the George V in Paris, it is good enough for me!
I always forget you are from Zingermanlandia. But since you live in France now, you can put any one of a million cheeses on your beets!
Blue cheese tastes good in so many recipes. It is also perfectly fine to enjoy blue cheese without anything else. I think for real cheese lovers, having blue cheese in panini or in salad dressing is just a step into a wider world of deliciousness.