I’ve got a current obsession: Beets, Pomegranates & Sunchokes. All three are super tasty and yummy. As we all know, the darker the veggie or fruit, the higher the nutritional value. Beets and poms are well known to be super foods, high in vitamins and antioxidant power.
Fun fact about pomegranates: all poms have the same number of seeds in them. Okay, I really don’t know how true that is. I read it on the Trader Joe’s Elevator Chalkboard. Sunchokes? Now what are sunchokes. Technically, the are known as one of two things: California Sunchokes OR Jeruselum Artichokes. Now you are thinking, oh! Green! Large and sort of acorn shaped! Wrong!! It’s actually a tubar. The closest thing I can think of that it resembles would be ginger root.
Light tan in color, when peeled, yields a beautiful white flesh. It’s got the texture of a water chestnut, with a slightly nutty and artichoke flavor. Raw or cooked, its delicious with a lot of nutritional value- which I find surprising considering how it is just a white root- the polar opposite of the beet.
So what do I get when I get creative (okay, not really that creative)? A balsamic pomegranate vinaigrette drizzled over a pile of beet slices, juliened carrots, shredded red cabbage, a sprinkle of pomegranate seeds and topped off with sunchoke slices. Of course no salad is truly complete without some kind of cheese right? Currently also obsessed with Cypress Grove Farm , I had topped off the salad stack with shavings of “Midnight Moon”, which is their hard goat cheese. This hard goat cheese has little bits of lactic acid crystallization, which adds an amazing crunch and amazing flavor and texture to the salad.
The mixture of the goat cheese, tangy yet sweet balsamic pom vinagrette and the crunch of all those root vegetables, ohhhh yumm!!! I couldn’t feel any healthier. For photo sake, I sort of plated the salad as a stack but feel free to turn it into a chop salad and toss all together. You can bet that’s how I prepped my lunch salad for tomorrow.
NOTE that for how much I have as “ingredients” is really up to you, how ever much salad you want to make up. Dressing-wise, the recipe I am putting up makes enough for about 2 salads.
ALSO NOTE: If you really don’t have access to a fresh pom, or don’t want to bother with the seeds, you can easily use Pom juice, just using a 3:2 ratio of balsamic to pom juice, rather then the 1:1 because the Pom juice is concentrated.
ingredients
1 small beet, peeled
1 carrot, peeled & sliced into O’s (or jullianed)
1 large California Sunchoke
.33 c shredded red cabbage
.75 c. pomegranate seeds, divided into .5 c & .25 c
3 tblspn balsamic vinegar
3 tblspn olive oil
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
instructions
1. taking the .5 c of pom seeds, in a small bowl, crush the seeds to get the juice. I found that the seeds put in a small bowl, crushed with the bottom of a pint glass worked best.
2. In a small sauce pan, put in the vinegar and about 3 tablespoons of pom juice and simmer until slightly reduced, let cool.
3. While your balsamic pom is cooling, arrange your veggies how you want.
4. Once the balsamic pom is cooled, emulsify (or whisk together) with the olive oil, salt and pepper.
5. Toss desired amount onto your salad.
6. Sprinkle on the cheese.
7. Yum!
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