contrast

I really do love cooking in the cold weather months...braising, roasting, caramelizing, slow long cooking...


But as individual dishes need contrast, so too does the meal...


This salad was the perfect way to refresh the taste buds between a bowl of creamy, warm celery root soup and a plate of crispy duck confit with lentils and cabbage.  Most often I would write a menu that progresses from salad to soup to main course, but I didn't want to go back-to-back with two fairly rich dishes. 

The crunchy, salty roasted pepitas made for a nice contrast both in texture and flavor within the dish itself.


Every ingredient in this salad was excellent, but the show stopper was without a doubt these tangerines!  Firm and sweet, but with great acid.

... the gems ...

I removed the larger leaves from the outside and relegated them to sandwich duty.  I like the inner light green/yellow leaves for this salad. 

... the toasted pepitas ...

A key ingredient in the Mexican dish mole, these are great on their own.  I always buy nuts and seeds raw and toast them myself.  Put them in a dry sauté pan and roast them in a 400 degree oven until they are slightly crunchy and take on a little color.  As with all nuts/seeds, a little color means flavor, a little too much color means bitter.  Hit them with a bit of good olive oil and kosher salt when they come out of the oven...delicious.  Make sure you toast some extra because they are great snacking on their own.

... the beets ...

These great beets were simply roasted in a hot oven with olive oil, a little water, salt and pepper (covered)...then peeled, cut into wedges and tossed with their own vinaigrette.

... the mint ...

feel free to use a lot in this salad...and whole leaves are great!

... the tangerines ...

Oh...my...the...tangerines!  You can cut them into segments or "supremes", but I like to first cut off pieces of the fruit almost like you would cutting around the core of an apple.  From there, I just cut slices against the direction of the membrane that separates each section...you can see what I mean if you look at the slices of tangerine in the salad above.  I like the way it looks and the way it eats.  For larger citrus like grapefruits I tend to cut out the individual segments.

... the vinaigrettes ...

I hadn't planned on using two different vinaigrettes for one salad, but I happened to have some blood oranges on hand.  I made a meyer lemon vinaigrette for the salad, and dressed the beets separately in a blood orange vinaigrette.