Thursday, February 18, 2010

Salad Days, Part 4

This salad tasted great in my mind, but not so great in my mouth. It wasn't bad; instead, the individual ingredients were overwhelmed.

I tossed chilled barely-steamed sugar snap peas from the garden (one of my favorite foods) with long ribbons of a farmers' market carrot and batons of beets my mom grew and pickled. I dressed the salad with a dressing of tahini, lemon juice, pickled beet juice, salt, and pepper.

Usually a finger staining treat, the pickled beets ended up usurping any power the other two vegetables had. Those poor, sweet snappy peas never had a chance against the beets.


But it was fun to eat and make, and it sure was beautiful, reminding me in its bellowing colors of the canvas awnings we saw all over Lisbon. And if a salad can't taste as good as one imagined it would, at least it can flirt a bit on the plate.

3 comments:

Stefaneener said...

Sometimes all you have to do is look pretty, you know?

Michelle said...

Three out of four isn't bad, and it sure is pretty.

Terry at Blue Kitchen said...

I'm a fairly recent convert to the earthy pleasures of beets, but I can see how they would take over more delicate flavors. Still, it is beautiful, isn't it?