Beet Salad with Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Walnuts

Megan and I are having so much fun finding uses for our lettuces and arugula, especially since we have so much of them. In the last week, our garden arugula has become quite sizable so we cut that a few days ago in addition to some in our lettuce pot. Since we didn't have enough to make just an arugula salad, we decided to combine it with sliced red beets, goat cheese, and walnuts, and made a delicious vinaigrette to toss the salad in. The beets we used were not garden beets (we hope to have some soon!), but we can still hold some pride in the fact that the salad contained our own arugula and some fresh herbs from our herb garden. Here is the recipe:

Beet Salad with Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Walnuts

Ingredients:

6 small to medium size beets
2 to 3 cups arugula leaves, approximately
1/4 onion, cut into strips

1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp white vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 or 2 tbsp of fresh chopped herbs (I used oregano, chives, and mint)
A pinch of sugar

goat cheese, crumbled for garnish
walnuts, chopped for garnish

Directions:

1. Peel beets and boil them until just tender, but not falling apart
2. Cut beets into thin slices and mix them with the arugula and onion in a salad bowl
3. In a separate bowl, combine olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt and pepper, herbs, and sugar and emulsify
4. Dress salad with vinaigrette
5. Serve salad family style and allow everyone to garnish their own portion with goat cheese and walnuts

I really liked the end result of this, but if I really have to be critical of our creation I would say that I would like a little more texture. If I had a mandolin slicer to cut the beets really thin, I might have left them raw. Also some more sharpness in the vinaigrette could be good to hold up to the robust and sweet flavour of the beets. The oil to acid ratio is what I typically use for lettuce, which is more delicate in flavour than beets, so maybe there needs to be more acid to match up with the beets. Either way this was a delicious and refreshing salad to eat!

Jennifer