This salad is one of my favorites.  It has it all-delicious, comforting, satisfying, hearty, salty, sweet, a little tart, and a pile of color too!  It is inspired by a salad I used to order at the Royal Exchange in San Francisco’s Financial District.  A recent search doesn’t reveal it on the menu any longer but it was AWESOME!  I think they used a flat iron steak for their salad and that they may have used some other ingredients not on my list but these were the highlights that stood out to my palate.  Talk about a huge nutritional bang on the salad plate, not to mention a really cool way to use leftover steak!  This salad is a whole meal in itself.

Spinach And Beet Salad With Quick Pickled Onion, Steak And Gorgonzola

1 pound fresh baby spinach, rinsed and thoroughly drained
1 can pickled sliced beets, cut into thin strips –be sure to reserve the juice to make the dressing!
½ yellow onion, cut into very thin strips
6 ounces cooked steak or other beef cut of your choice, sliced (I used a leftover, thick cut New York strip which had been marinated and barbequed on the Weber)
2 ½ ounces crumbled gorgonzola cheese
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons olive or grapeseed oil
1 clove crushed garlic
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Drain beet juice into a saucepan.  Turn heat up to high and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, stir in onion and remove from heat.  Once thoroughly cooled (see the cool beet color on the onion?  Awesome, right?), remove onion from beet juice, reserving juice for salad dressing.Whisk pepper, thyme, oil, crushed garlic, salt and balsamic vinegar into the reserved beet juice.  This is your dressing.

In a large bowl, using salad tongs, toss the spinach together with the dressing, making sure to thoroughly coat the spinach.  Using salad tongs, transfer dressed spinach onto a serving platter, drizzle a little more of the dressing on top of the greens and discard the rest of the excess dressing.  Top with shredded beets, onion, gorgonzola and steak.  I also used a couple of the beet slices for garnish.

Eat Well!

~Trish