With plans to spend more time around the table—and yes, healthy resolutions on the brain—I wanted to create a light, non-fussy salad that is anything but generic.  Instead of turning to complicated, hard-to-find ingredients to make up this beet arugula salad, I relied on a few of my favorite flavors to really shine through. 

If you follow a lot of my recipes, you know that I thoroughly enjoy the counterpoints of flavors and textures; sweet to spicy, tangy to salty, soft to crunchy.  So as I prepared this beet arugula salad, I found that the spice and bitterness of the arugula matched the sweetness of the candied cashews and pickled beets wonderfully, giving the salad an extra depth in flavor and interest.  And the herbed goat cheese…well in my opinion, you can’t ever go wrong with goat cheese.  Plus, for any of you who are sensitive to dairy/lactose, goat has the very least amount of all of the cheeses (lactose amount from highest to lowest: sheep, cow, and then goat). So if sensitivity is an issue, you may want to keep that in mind.

And speaking of beets, I’ve tried both pickled and fresh beets in this salad; coming to decide I actually prefer pickled over the latter. Beets, as you know, can be a bit too “earthy” for me in taste, and the pickling process seems to mask that flavor, if not take it away entirely.  

As you saw last week, this beet arugula salad perfectly compliments my recipe for lemony-garlic roasted chicken (hint hint: it’s a crowd-pleaser!), but I will of course be enjoying this salad by itself for many weekday lunches to come. Truly, MKR

P.S. For more salad recipes that have caught our eye, check out our pinterest board.  And salads not your thing? This post may just change your mind. xo

 
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