This is Day 3 of Fabulous Fall Bounty, hosted by Cam of Culinary Adventures with Camilla and sponsored by Melissa's Produce, Le Creuset and Silpat. These companies sent a dozen bloggers products to use in the creation of recipes for this event. I received no monetary compensation and all opinions are my own.
One of the things I received, in this huge box from Melissa's, was peeled and steamed baby beets. These are wonderful to have in the refrigerator. Especially, if like me, you LOVE beets. They are so yummy and delicious but they do take a while to prepare. Having these precooked and sealed beets on hand makes life much easier.
You can imagine how thrilled I was when the poll for our Crazy Ingredient Challenge was complete and beets was one of the winning ingredients. Providence.
Each month, our host, Kelly of Passion Kneaded, gives us 2 subsets of 4 ingredients. We vote on which ingredients we want from each subset and when the tally comes in we are told which ingredients we must include in a recipe created for the event.
It is a lot of fun and, if you enjoy a challenge, we would love to have you join us. Just put a comment below or on any of the recipe links for CIC and let us know.
The second ingredient this month? Coffee.... that kinda set me back a bit. My first thought was a coffee flavored smoothie. I use beets in my smoothies quite often. I actually played around with the idea of making a beet and coffee ice cream too.
It seemed as if each idea I had included a creaminess of some sort. This led me to think about a creamy salad dressing. I love adding beets to my salads and I thought that the bitterness of a creamy coffee dressing, drizzled on a salad that was sweetened, naturally, with beets would work.
Yes, those are some beautiful beef filet steaks that you see in the background. This salad was going to be the first course of a Surf and Turf dinner that I was serving for company so I wanted it to be delicious.
And it was. I kept it very simple. Mixed greens, sliced beets and a drizzle of creamy coffee dressing. It was surprisingly tasty and the perfect salad to serve when the rest of the meal is going to be rich and decadent. Bitter is one of my favorite tastes. I know it is not for everybody so I did add a little honey to the dressing to cut the bitterness just a bit while still leaving enough that it made you stop and take notice that this was not your ordinary salad dressing.
Baby Beet Salad with a Creamy Coffee Dressing
1 baby beet per person, steamed, peeled and cut into slices
2 handfuls of mixed greens, per person
1 (6 oz) carton plain Greek yogurt
2 T. brewed coffee
1 t. honey
salt and pepper to taste
Whisk together the yogurt, coffee, honey, salt and pepper. Taste and adjust sweetness and seasonings as desired.
Chill a salad plate for each person. Place 2 handfuls of salad greens on each plate. Top with sliced beets and drizzle with dressing. Print Recipe
I did wonder how coffee would work in a salad dressing. Glad to see it was successful.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it Kelly.
DeleteWow that dressing sounds awesome.
ReplyDelete