Beetroot Salad with Grapefruit and Goat’s Cheese

OK, pre cook-through personal disclosure moment. I admit to not being the world’s greatest fan of beetroot. I  don’t know why – there is nothing particularly offensive about it, but, taste-wise, it just does nothing for me. Maybe I overdosed on the stuff during my time backpacking in Australia a few years ago. As I discovered, our Antipodean cousins seriously, seriously love this stuff. From fast food “aussie burgers” to high end restaurant dishes, beetroot is seemingly everywhere. I’m not sure, but when he came up with this recipe for beetroot salad, maybe Ramsay had a Bondi Hotel in mind rather than a traditional British pub!

So, for this recipe I had to get my hands on some raw beets. My local supermarket only had the pre-washed, pre-cooked packaged type, so I made a lunchtime dash over to Borough market to get some of the real deal – leaves, roots, fresh mud and all. You can see the beets below along with the other ingredients of grapefruit, goat’s cheese, hazelnuts, thyme and lemon thyme.

The first job was to get the beetroots into the oven. I trimmed the roots and leaves so that just the bulbous parts of the plants remained and gave these a good wash before padding them dry with paper towel.

On a large piece of cooking foil I spread out a generous handful of rock salt and a few sprigs of thyme. The beets were then sat on top.

By bringing the foil together and folding the edges I made a little parcel which was popped in the oven to bake for about 45 minutes. In the meantime, I got on with prepping the other ingredients. For the grapefruit I used a serrated fruit knife to top and tail the fruit, before carefully trimming away the outer peel, doing my best to remove any of the white pith from the outside as I went.

Once the grapefruit was peeled, I placed it into a sieve over a measuring jug and began to slice out each segment one by one, making sure to capture any of the juices in the jug below.

For the hazelnuts, I lightly toasted them in a hot pan. You need to be careful here, as it’s pretty easy to let the nuts burn giving them a nasty, acrid flavour. Luckily I had a big enough bag of nuts that I could afford two goes at it! Eventually, I took the toasted nuts and lightly crushed them in a pestle.

Once the beetroots were cooked I took them out of the oven and peeled them using a small knife. It’s a good idea to use a pair of (preferably brand new!) rubber gloves here to save staining your hands bright red. Even still, I managed to turn my kitchen into something out of the TV show crime scene investigation.

With the beets peeled it was time to make up the dressing. Into the grapefruit juice saved from earlier I added some really good olive oil, the leaves stripped from a few springs of lemon thyme, some salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. I whisked it all together and adjusted the seasoning to taste.

To assemble the salad I roughly chopped the beetroot and arranged it on a plate along with the grapefruit segments.  The goat’s cheese was crumbled and sprinkled on top along with the crushed hazelnuts, before I poured over the salad dressing.

How was it? Well, it certainly looked pretty enough, with lots of different colours jumping off the plate. As for the taste? Well, I could tell that the flavours all seemed to work together fairly well but, to be honest, as a complete dish it didn’t really get me excited. I think I can chalk this one up as the first “MISS” in my cook through adventure. Its not a dish I think I would make again. But who knows, maybe if you are big fan of beetroot, or just Australian, it might be right up your street. So why not (adopting best Sydney accent) “give it a go” yourself?