Chioggia Beet & Spinach Salad - Fair Food Farmstand

Shopping in the new & improved Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market Saturday I came across these Chioggia beets. I picked up some local organic curly spinach for a winter salad.

After roasting them at 350 for 30 minutes in a tightly covered pan with some water, we sliced them up into quarters and had a pleasant surprise. The Chioggia is also known and the Candystripe or Bulls Eye beet, shown here.

We also put some walnuts in the oven to roast while the beets were doing their thing - a perfect bit of crunch to go with the salad.

We had some standard chevre, which I formed into cherry-sized balls and rolled in smoked paprika. I placed them in a microwave for about 30-40 seconds to just loosen up a bit before placing them atop the salad.

The spinach was simply dressed in a sherry vinaigrette, while the beets were left naked so that we could appreciate their sweet, earth chew - why mess with perfection. The sweet beets, tangy dressing, smoky heat of the paprika and the warm, cheesy goat cheese crumbles ended up being a balanced winter salad...all the better that many of the ingredients were locally sourced thanks to Fair Food Farmstand.

Goat Cheese at Seal Cove Farm

We took a little mini-trip to Maine and stayed with friends just outside Bar Harbor. Down the road from the house was the Seal Cove Farm, located on a road called Milky Way.

The farm has a small shop where you can drop in and sample from several of their fresh chevre and aged cheeses. The chevre is prepared both naked or herb encrusted - the dill being one of my favorites. They also sell ash-covered goat cheese pyramids, as well as two different varieties of blended milk cheeses.

Although Elizabeth was eyeing the colossal ash-coated pyramids, we ended up taking home two of the more unusual varieties. Pearl was a goat-cow blend that resembled brie or Bucheron, a rinded cheese with a creamy center. One of the cheese-makers explained that a high-end cheese shop in New York City would buy the cup-cake shaped cheeses and wrap them in sumac leaves to mature in their cellar before re-selling them.

The second purchase was one of the Tommes, a firm disc of aged goat & cow cheese that was steeped in olive oil laced with juniper and pink peppercorns. There were a few blooms on the Tommes that lent a soft blue-cheese tickle that quickly mellowed.

Located just off Route 3, it's an easy drive for anybody visiting Bar Harbor.