Beetroot Salad

In a sudden fit of insanity I bought two enormous beets at the produce store. Each of them weighs about 2½ pounds. I roasted them whole in the oven, which turned out to be kind of silly all by itself - at 350 F the damn things took three hours to get tender. I could have cooked a turkey in that time.

Anyway, I like beets and that's fortunate because I've got about five pounds of beetroot to eat. I started off with a simple beetroot salad, made as a light lunch for my wife and I.

Beetroot Salad - A Light Lunch for Two
Serves 2

1 sweet Cubanelle pepper, thinly sliced into rings
20 small grape tomatoes
1 small red onion, thinly sliced into rings
14 ounces of cooked beetroot, peeled and cut in cubes
12 green olives
4 ounces beyaz peynir or feta cheese, cut in small cubes
Parsley, chopped
Olive oil
Fresh lemon wedges
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Set two salad plates on your work area.

On each plate, arrange a circle of green pepper rings. Along the outside of each circle, place 10 grape tomatoes like numbers around the edge of a clock. On top of the peppers, set a single layer of onion slices.

Pile half of the cubed beetroot on each plate, on top of the onions. Place two ounces of cheese cubes here and there on each pile of beets, and add six olives to each plate. Sprinkle each plate with a few more slices of onion, then add coarsely chopped parsley on top of all. Drizzle liberally with a good quality extra-virgin olive oil and squeeze lemon juice to taste over all. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

You can scale this recipe up or down to serve as many people as necessary.

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