A great spring salad

I'm rather partial to a bit of beetroot, love walnuts and yearn for soft, tangy goat's cheese. So it isn't that surprising that one of my new favourite dishes (especially as the weather seems to be warming up slightly) is a salad that combines these three ingredients.

A couple of points worth noting: beetroot, delicious as it is, is also packed with sugars, so go easy on it. You can buy beetroot ready-cooked, but make sure it hasn't been preserved in vinegar. Alternatively, buy uncooked beetroot, the smaller and more tender the better. I like to cook mine in the oven at around 200C, wrapped in tin foil with a few drops of water sprinkled around the beetroot to stop it drying out. Depending on the size of your beetroot, it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cook through – if in doubt, take it out of the oven and poke a skewer through it. If it slips through easily, it's done. If you meet with resistance, the beetroot probably needs to go back into the oven a bit longer. Don't forget to peel it before slicing it up for the salad – the skin slips off fairly easily.

It's also worth paying good money for decent walnuts. I nearly fainted when I saw the price of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Chilean walnuts (nearly four quid for a bag), but they're so moist and flavoursome in comparison to anything else I've found that I've decided I'd rather have slightly fewer, tastier walnuts than a larger quantity of dried-out nuts.

You can use any kind of goat's cheese, from the hard and tangy kind to soft goat's curd that needs to be spooned onto the salad. Feta, although it's a sheep's milk cheese, is another good alternative.

Beetroot, walnut and goat's cheese salad for one

a good handful of salad leaves (I like the ones with aromatic herbs mixed in)
75g cooked beetroot, sliced
a handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
50g goat's cheese, crumbled

Dressing:
Walnut oil
Tarragon vinegar
Dijon mustard

Making this salad, once you've cooked your beetroot according to instructions, couldn't be simpler. Just chuck the beetroot, nuts and cheese on top of the leaves, dress and serve.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't given any quantities for the dressing – I'm crediting you with enough smarts to make a dressing all by yourself. Just go easy on the amount you use to keep the calories down.