Winter Beet Salad with Goat Cheese Mousse and Orange Vanilla Vinagrette

I was all excited when daylight savings time hit, because that means its spring, and that means warm weather and fresh vegetables and baseball. Well it snowed this weekend, and it’s too early to plant my modest balcony garden. Plus, spring training games don’t really cut it. I don’t really know how this ties into this post, other than to say it is still definitely winter in my area of the world, so here’s some winter vegetables in the form of a salad.  This recipe makes a lot of vinaigrette and goat cheese mousse. While you could easily trim down the amount of mousse you make, there’s not much of a way around ending up with a pretty hefty amount of vinaigrette.

This overall dish was heavily inspired by a similar beet dish in the Eleven Madison Park Cookbook. The vinaigrette is straight from the cookbook that comes with Vitamixes.

Orange Vanilla Vinagrette (makes 3 cups)

2 oranges, peeled, halved, seeded

1 lemon, peeled, halved, seeded

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon honey

1 dash hot sauce

1/4 teasoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil

Add all ingredients but the olive oil into a blender, and process until liquefied – for a Vitamix, start on setting 1, increase speed to setting 4 and process for 20 seconds. Reduce the speed to low (setting 1) and open up the plug on the lid. Slowly pour in the olive oil with the blender running until all is emulsified.

Goat Cheese Mousse:

4 oz. goat cheese

½ cup (4 oz.) heavy cream

Add both ingredients to a food processor and process until smooth.

Salad (for 2 servings):

1 golden beet

1 carrot

1 black radish

1 pickled red beet (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pickled_beets/)

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

1 tbsp butter

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Peel the beet and slice into ¼” thick slices. Place in a roasting dish and season with salt and pepper and pour on a little olive oil. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel the carrot and slice into ¼” thick rounds. Place in a 10” pan, and pour in cold water until it comes about halfway up the carrots. Add in the 1 tbsp of butter and some salt. Turn the heat on medium, until the water comes up to a simmer, turn down to low/medium low and let cook for 10 minutes, until the carrots are fork tender, the water has evaporated, and the carrots are glazed.

Peel and slice the black radish as thinly as possible. Before assembly, you’ll want to cut everything into rounds. A ring mold is the weapon of choice here; I actually used the cap of a Gatorade bottle. If you have different sized ring molds, even better. Cut the roasted golden beets, pickled red beets, and black radishes into circles. Nature already took care of the carrots being the right shape for this dish, so no need to do any additional reshaping there. Lay out the vegetables on a plate, top with vinaigrette and goat cheese and a little black pepper.