(Serves 2)
- 4-6 cooked beets
Cover the beets in water, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to simmer and let cook until they are tender enough to be pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes, depending on the size of your beets. Once they are cooked, run them under cold water and slip the skins off.
- 1 tomato, cored and sliced
- Salad greens
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Balsamic vinegar
- Freshly ground pepper
- Pickled onions
To prepare the pickled onions:
- 1 red onion, quartered lengthwise and then sliced very thin
- ½ cup cider vinegar
- ½ cup water
- 2 Tb sugar
- ½ tsp dried dill
To pickle the onion: Bring the vinegar, water and sugar to a boil and cook just long enough for the sugar to melt. Slice the red onion very thinly and place the slices in a mason jar. Stir the dill into the vinegar mixture and pour it over the onions to cover them. Let them marinate at least two hours before using; I usually pickle them the day before because I like them to be nicely chilled. The pickled onions keep well in the fridge for about a week and a half. In addition to being a great salad ingredient, they are a tasty addition to anything that you are cooking in place of regular raw onions. The vinegary flavor adds a delightful twist to a lot of recipes.
Arrange the salad greens on a plate and then alternate the beet and tomato slices on top of the greens. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of the pickled onions on top.
For the dressing on this salad, I simply drizzled some olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the salad and added a little bit of freshly ground pepper.