Potato, beet, and belgian endive salad with toasted hazelnuts

December 21, 2009 at 12:19 am (B_minus (2.5 stars), Peter Berley, Root vegetables, Salads, Starches, Winter recipes)

I bought some beets and potatoes at the farmer’s market and started looking around for something to do with them.  I found this recipe for a winter salad in Peter Berley’s modern vegetarian kitchen.  The potatoes and beets are each dressed separately–the potatoes in a lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette and the beets with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and caraway seeds.  Then the two are mixed together and garnished with chopped, toasted hazelnuts and fresh dill.  The salad is meant to be served with endive petals.

I only used 2/3 of the olive oil and 1/2 of the salt but otherwise followed the recipe pretty carefully.  I placed the salad into the endive petals, as if they were little boats.  The dish looked quite pretty I thought, with the whole endive petals carrying the bright pink beets and the little bits of green dill on top.  Derek said the presentation was not bad, but it reminded him of a restaurant that was “trying, but wasn’t quite there”, like Cafe Sam in Pittsburgh.

I quite liked the combination of the sweet, balsamic vinegar tossed beets and the slightly bitter endive.  I couldn’t taste the caraway at all, and the hazelnuts rarely distinguished themselves.  Maybe my hazelnuts weren’t the best, or I didn’t toast them enough, but they just didn’t add much to the dish.  The potatoes were pretty, but I’m not sure they were necessary.  Despite my reduction in the olive oil, I thought this dish was plenty rich.  Next time I might try half the olive oil.  I might try a version of this recipe with just the beets and endive and dill, and see how it compares to the original. It would certainly be a simpler recipe.

Derek rated this recipe a B.  I’d give it a B as well, but with a few tweaks I think it will move up to a B+.