Roasted Beet, Blood Orange, and Goat Cheese Salad

If you want a salad that wows guests and tastes as gorgeously delicious as it looks, try this one! It's a perfect balance: earthy full-flavoured roasted beets, creamy, tangy goat cheese and the high citrus notes of blood orange. As a decadent extra-special touch, sweet spiced pecans top the lot. Truly yummerific.

Roasted Beet, Blood Orange, and Goat Cheese Salad

2 medium beets, one red and one yellow
1 head red leaf lettuce
2 blood oranges
1 small tube pepper-crusted fresh goat cheese
1/2 C pecan halves
2 T demerara sugar
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Vinaigrette:
1 T dijon mustard
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T olive oil
Whisk all together until nicely emulsified.

Wrap beets individually in foil and roast in a 400F oven until fork-tender, about one hour. When they are cooked, cool and slide skins off, cut into 1/2" chunks and chill.

Make your sweet spiced pecans: Toast the pecan halves lightly in a 400F oven or in a frying pan on the stovetop on medium heat. They are done as soon as they become fragrant, maybe 3 or 4 minutes. Melt the sugar in a small frying pan on medium heat,it helps to add a drop or two of water. When it is melted and bubbling,allow it to bubble for a minute then remove from heat and toss in the pecans,sprinkling with cayenne. Cool and break into peices.

Cut blood oranges into suprèmes.

A word about suprèming: Let me tell you about the word "suprème". I learned this technique on a french cooking show and then forgot what it was called for years. I tried to describe it to people, tried to look it up on the internet, to no avail. My boyfriend declared that it was not a real word. Finally, at long last,I came across the right word: sumprème! Woo hoo! SO now I use it freely, like a good foodie should. It basically just means slicing the flesh of the orange away from the membrane, so that you have little de-skinned segments of flesh. It's fancy.

Wash and dry your lettuce well and tear into bite-sized peices, and divide onto four plates. Divide the beet chunks and orange supremes amongst the four plates. Crumble the goat cheese over the salads (if you can't find pepper-crusted goat cheese, just roll a plain tube in some fresh-cracked pepper before crumbling). Divide the pecans over the salads and drizzle lightly with vinaigrette (you may not need all of it).