I picked up some beautiful beets for my roasted beet watercress salad from my local Sunday Farmer’s Market. There is a wonderful stall, Underwood Family Farms, that almost always (especially this time of year,) have a huge selection of beets. I go through phases with beets – sometimes I get really gung-ho and buy the magenta ones to grate onto salads and juice: sometimes I’ll buy the little golden ones to roast for a simple salad, but this week I spotted some giant pale pink ones. They looked like giant radishes, but Peggy (lovely farmer who is there every Sunday,) explained that they were candy-striped beats. I knew that they’d probably look pretty when cut open, so grabbed a bunch intending to put together a salad to beat all salads.
As far as I’m concerned a marriage-made-in-culinary-heaven is roasted beets and soft goat cheese or feta. What I love most about the salad is that aside from it’s exquisite complimentary tastes and textures, its also insanely healthy: walnuts, beets, sprouts and watercress are all in my top 10 healthiest foods category – so what a joy to be able to mingle them together into this perfect salad.
Make sure you buy enough of each ingredient so you can make this salad twice. I ate it 3 days-running for lunch this week.
Ingredients
Roasted Beet Watercress Salad
- 3 large beets (can be any color but the candy-striped makes it look spectacular)
- I package of watercress
- 2-ounces of goat cheese that can crumble or feta
- 1/2 cup raw walnuts
- 1/2 cup of sprouts (clover, alfalfa or broccoli is fine)
Dressing
- 1/2 cup good cold-pressed olive oil
- 1tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1tsp honey
- 1tsp dijon mustard
- sea salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F
- Roughly oil the skins of the beets with any old vegetable oil and place the beets on a baking sheet covered with foil for about an hour or until a knife easily slips into the beet.
- Remove from the oven and allow them to cool completely. I roasted my beets on Sunday and when they were cool, wrapped them up in the foil I’d cooked them in and put them in the fridge until the next day.
- When you are ready to assemble the salad: Take the beets out and slip off their skins – they should come off really easily. Slice the beets into 1/4″ slices.
- Arrange a bed of watercress on a pretty plate and lay the beet slices overlapping each other on top.
- Crumble the cheese and sprinkle the walnuts over the salad. Finally add the sprouts and dress.
- Enjoy your roasted beet watercress salad!
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