We made this salad to accompany the Gnocchi in Tomato Vegetable Sauce from the other night. This recipe was also from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and again, she gave us another great recipe!

The highlight of this salad are the beets – as you can see, their brilliant color makes this dish both eye-catching and mouth-watering! The one significant change we made was doubling the quinoa so there was a more even ratio of vegetables to quinoa, which made it more of a salad than purely a vegetable side dish. In the end, that was a great choice and we loved every bit of it!

Beet and Root Vegetable Salad with Quinoa
Serves 4-5
Recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Ingredients:

Salad:
1 cup uncooked plain quinoa, rinsed
Coarse salt
3 small shallots
Olive oil
1 1/2 lbs mixed root vegetables (radishes, turnips, parsnips, mixed beets, carrots…), as small as you can find them, scrubbed, trimmed and halved to be one to one and a half-inch cubes or so
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Freshly ground black pepper

Dressing:
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 big pinches of coarse salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Prepare quinoa: bring the quinoa and 2 cups salted water to a boil. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until quinoa has absorbed water – may be longer with more quinoa. Set aside.

3. Roast vegetables: while quinoa cooks, prepare the vegetables. Peel shallots and separate cloves. Make a small foil packet and place the shallots inside, drizzling them with olive oil. Place on a rack in the oven to begin roasting them.

Meanwhile, coat a baking sheet with olive oil and place the root vegetables in a single layer on the sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, squeeze the lemon juice all over and sprinkle generously with salt and black pepper. Roast for 20 minutes in oven, then flip the vegetables and roast for an additionally 10 minutes.

4. Prepare vinaigrette: when vegetables are done, remove them from the oven and set aside. Remove the shallots from the foil packet and place in a blender with the sherry and balsamic vinegars and two pinches of salt and some pepper. Drizzle in some olive oil and blend.

5. To assemble: spoon the quinoa onto a platter and arrange the beets on top. Drizzle entire dish with vinaigrette and serve immediately.