Beet + Pomegranate Winter Salad

DSC_0961smI brought this salad to a brunch where my friends and their brand-new babies were gathering on a recent chilly Sunday morning. With donuts, cheesy egg bakes, and mimosas on the menu, it helped to make a small contribution of vegetables. It can be tough for a salad to compete with all that, but people seemed to enjoy it. As one of my friend’s husbands remarked, “it’s saying something that this is on my plate right now.” After brunch, the babies got bundled up in winter gear and went for a sleigh ride around the yard. By now, the snow is all melted, but the spring produce hasn’t quite yet sprung. So I’ll share this winter salad to tide me over.

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Quick-pickled Red Pepper Wraps

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Pickling vegetables can be an ambitious endeavor, and it’s a science trying to develop delicious flavors while avoiding incubating dangerous bacteria. This technique of a quick pickle, however, produces the best of flavor in just a short time (and without having to sterilize the jars). These wraps have great flavor and enough bite to lift them out of the mundane.

First, roasting the bell peppers gives them depth and complexity. Then a 24-hour bath in a salty vinegar mixture gives the peppers a bright acidity; this makes the peppers really pop, rather than the savory-subtle brine of the full-blown pickling process. Adding spinach gives the wraps crunch factor.

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Warm Brussels Sprouts Salad

DSC_0629smGiven that it’s been absolutely frigid for weeks on end, most of my cooking has been one of two things: long-simmering stove-top dishes or supplementing the heating in my apartment by turning on the oven, chopping some vegetables, and allowing them to roast all afternoon. With all the snow, and cold, and damp, cooking in a warm kitchen has been a source of comfort. And while I’ve made a good number of stews, soups, and starches, I was particularly pleased with this recent production.  A little bit of salty and a little bit of sweet all comes together in this beautiful winter salad.

DSC_0632smTo make the salad I start by roasting the Brussels sprouts in the oven for a good chunk of an hour before assembling the rest of the ingredients. For this version, I used the teeny tiny Brussels sprouts at Whole Foods, so I simply sliced them the halves. If you use bigger sprouts, consider quartering them. They’re roasted with a hefty dose of olive oil and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper before going in the oven. After roasting, a toss them with a bit of balsamic vinegar, which, paired with the remaining olive oil on the vegetables, turns into the dressing for the salad. This isn’t a heavily dressed salad, but feel free to add a bit more oil or vinegar if you need it. The light dressing works in part because the Brussels sprouts, apples, and raisins are so moist, and their warmth just ever so slightly wilts the arugula. So rather than tough, dry fronds, the separate ingredients of the salad come together to serve as dressing.

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