to eat: a salad of beets, berries, herbs and nuts

A vibrant, zingy and revitalising dish that is on weekly rotation at my house right now.

As promised, here’s the first of a regular monthly recipe series featuring vibrant foods that I cook at home with my husband, for our family. These will mostly be loose recipes, purposefully simple. Made to be flexed and toyed with depending on your taste preferences and what you have on hand.

This salad of beets, berries, herbs and nuts is what I like to file under ‘compositional cooking’. As long as you have something from each category (roots, vinegar, fruit, herb and nuts/seeds), you can get started and it’ll be ready in 5 min. The zing of the vinegar, matched by the sweetness of a summer fruit, the earthy beetroot and a rich, crunchy nut means it’s exciting on the tongue.

We tag this grated salad onto any meal, however it pairs especially well with proteins. I most love eating it with pan fried fish and a baked kumara (sweet potato) that’s covered in butter, ghee or coconut oil. These amounts roughly serve 4 people if having as a side. Sometimes if we’re really eager, Tom and I will split it and eat the whole lot between us.

Need: 2 beets and 1 carrot (grated); handfuls of toasted walnuts or a 1/2 cup of buckwheat; frozen raspberries or finely diced plum; red or white wine vinegar, handful of chopped mint or tarragon, salt.

Do: Hand squeeze some of the grated beets over the sink first to remove a bit of the water content. Add the beets, carrot, red wine vinegar and chopped mint to a large bowl. If frozen, smush the raspberries a bit with your fingers before adding them to the bowl, too. Add the nut or seed last, toss everything together, then serve.

Season with salt if you think it needs it and taste as you go with the vinegar.

*Toasted nuts: walnuts shine best when a slosh of olive oil is added to the pan while toasting. Buckwheat is STUNNING in this salad, but prefers a dry toast in the pan, shaking until it browns nicely all over. Can also use sunflower seeds.

*As I mentioned in Salads 101, invest in a beautiful vinegar and it will do much of the heavy lifting for you. I love the Forvm brand. In this salad, add more vinegar until you find your sweet spot for acid. Enjoy!