Raw Beet Love Slaw:
- One Beet
- One Apple (a Fuji, Gala, Pink Lady, or Honeycrisp)
- Mild and slightly crumbly Blue Cheese (optional)
- 1/2 Avocado (optional)
- Lardons (also optional)
- Olive Oil
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Dijon Mustard
- Salt and Pepper
Scrub that beet down and clean its blasphemous skin. You can peel it off of course, but then using your mandolin to slice it paper thin is going to be like holding a goldfish out of water. Except that this could involve you loosing your fingers. So don’t peel it. Then, run it through the mandolin on the slice blade, and then stack the beet slices on top of one another and julienne them. Don’t use the mandolin for the apple because you want those slices like 1/8 in or so by hand before you julienne the apples, matchstick style.
They’ll just kind of flop into nothingness if you mandolin them.
Okay – Optionals: crumble a bit of blue cheese into your julienned apples and beets, thinly slice up half an avocado, and toss in a small handful of lardons. No, bacon bits do not count, and they are strictly forbidden. This is not a recipe from the Ghetto Gourmet (God, I love that show).
Dressing: About a tablespoon to 2 of olive oil. A half a tbsp of Dijon mustard, 2 tsp balsamic, salt and pepper. Mix salad thoroughly. Taste. Adjust with dressing ingredients. There is a lot of room for variation. Depending on the sweetness or your apples and beets, the earthiness level of your beets, and whatever optional ingredients you added, it will change the balance of fatty/salty/sweet/tart/earthy. If you want to be sure, add less mustard and balsamic, mix it and taste it. You can always add more. You’ll get the hang of it after a few times.
Notes: Obviously, if you’re using cheese, cado, du lardons, you can go a bit easy on the oil.
