Roasted Beet Salad

Roasting beets intensifies their flavour and inherent sweetness, making them perfect for this simple, delicious salad. Feel free to add cucumbers, tomatoes or any other vegetable that you wish or switch out the grapefruit for an orange. Roasted cumin seeds are key to the salad dressing here, as they add a wonderful smokiness. They are easily available in small jars in the spice section of most grocery stores.

Roasted Beet Salad

6 small sized beets, about 350gm

4 tbsp olive oil, divided

Salt to taste

2 tbsp each: balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, chopped fresh mint, chopped fresh coriander

1 tsp grainy Dijon mustard, honey

1/4 tsp each: roasted ground cumin seeds, ground black pepper

1 large red grapefruit

1 cup fresh baby greens

1/4 cup chopped red onions

Preheat oven to 420 F. Wash beets, place them all in a large piece of foil in a baking dish. Sprinkle 2 tbsp oil and salt to taste over them. Crimp edges of foil to make a sealed package.

Place dish with foiled beets in oven, roast for 1 hour until cooked through and tender. Cool them to room temperature, peel and slice them into 1/4 inch thick rounds. Beets can be roasted up to 1 day ahead of time and kept refrigerated until used.

Meanwhile combine remaining olive oil, salt to taste, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, honey, roasted cumin and black pepper to make a dressing for the beets.

Peel grapefruit and slice into thin rounds.

Arrange baby greens on serving plate, top with grapefruit slices, arrange beet slices over and scatter red onions, mint and coriander over top.

Give the dressing a quick stir and pour evenly over beet salad.

Serves four