Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens

 

This is another recipe that was inspired by my CSA haul.  I'm really trying to make sure that we use all of the wonderful produce that I picked up so we built this meal around beet salad.  I proposed making Zucchini Cornbread to go with the beet salad.  Alex wasn't a fan of that idea.  Then I proposed making fried green tomatoes.  He didn't shoot that one down, but he didn't jump up and down in joy either.  And then I proposed making a Cherry Tomato and Lemon Salad.  Alex's response was "a salad with a salad?"  So he clearly wasn't a huge fan of that idea either.  But I was determined to make this beet salad so I stuck with it.  How's that for perseverance?

Generally when we make beets we either serve them over some mixed greens with goat cheese and nuts as a beet salad, or we serve them solo.  It has never occurred to me before to mix them with the beet greens.  When I buy beets at the grocery store the first thing I usually do when I get home is chop off the greens and throw them away.  Granted, the beets at the grocery store are nowhere near as fresh as the ones I picked up from Holton Farms the other day.  The greens on this bunch actually looked wonderful.  So I was excited to try them out.  Unfortunately we didn't have enough beet greens to make a dish with just the greens (unless of course I only wanted enough for each of us to have 2 forkfuls), so I had to serve the greens with something else.  I found a few recipes that mixed together the beet greens with the beets themselves and that seemed like the logical way to go.  So I found a recipe that did just that.  I really liked the combination of the sweet onions, beets, beet greens and oranges.  I have never mixed any of those ingredients together before so it was a totally new flavor profile for me.  Our orange was kind of anemic.  I really wish it had more bold citrus flavor, but I guess that's my fault for picking out a mediocre out of season orange.  Even with an anemic orange, the flavor was quite nice.  You want to cut the onions fairly thin so they can't overwhelm the other subtler flavors in the dish.  But when everything is in balance it is truly lovely.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens

Bon Appetit

January 2004

INGREDIENTS:
6 medium beets with beet greens attached
2 large oranges
1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.

Cook beet greens in large saucepan of boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.