This is such a delicious and simple salad. For your cooked beets, you can boil or steam them, but I prefer roasting them. You can cook them in a pressure cooker. In any case, you want them cooled and peeled, and that can be done ahead of time. Do not add salt to the beets when you cook them. This makes a good quantity of salad, so you may wish to halve it, but it does hold in the refrigerator for at least a week and a half or more. You can serve it a few times over that week or so, and not have to make salad each time.

10 medium beets, scrubbed, cooked, cooled and peeled, diced into fine dice
1 large red onion, finely minced
1 bunch fresh, flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons cumin seeds
1 1/2 tablespoons flake salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice

In a large bowl, put the diced beets, minced onion, chopped parsley and cilantro, and toss a little.

In a small frying pan, toast the cumin seeds over medium heat, stirring occasionally, 2 - 3 minutes. Immediately remove from the heat once they start to smell toasty. You can grind them completely in a spice grinder or use a mortar and pestle and only roughly crack and grind them (which I prefer). Allow to cool.

Mix together the toasted cumin seeds, salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice into a dressing. Pour over the vegetables and herbs in the bowl and mix well to coat everything. Chill until ready to serve.

Labels: Homemaking, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen

// posted by Ranee @ Arabian Knits @ 2:11 PM