Can it really be time to retire the hearty soups of winter and move on to lighter fare? Salads, even? Here in Vancouver, with temperatures edging towards twenty degrees celsius, with glorious sunshine and blue skies, I’d say yes! Of course I’m not looking ahead on the weather front for any looming rainclouds.

Speaking of salads, it would be hard to find any in the traditional Coorg repertoire. Certainly there are cool accompaniments to a spicy meal, made from mangoes, citrus, or cucumber mixed with spiced yogurt. But I think that overall, we did seem to nurse a healthy suspicion of uncooked greens and vegetables!

Still, given the eclectic palate and adventurous taste buds of some, a salad as we generally know it might have made an unexpected guest appearance at the table now and then.

One such interloper salad happened to be a staple at my grandmother’s table. It consisted of cooked beets, combined with tomatoes, cucumber, onions, green chillis and fresh herbs, dressed with sharp lime juice and salt. The flavours are bold and fresh, and the earthiness of  the beetroot provides an oddly meaty quality to the salad. Ah! Perhaps that was the foot in the door… 😉

There are good tomatoes in the markets already, and when picking up a beautiful bunch of beets at the farmers market the other day, I knew it was time to revisit an old favourite.

Beetroot salad

(Almost meaty!)

• 2 cups cooked beetroot
  I like to steam or roast the beets, peel and dice them not too small. Say 1 1/2 –2 cm.
• 2-3 medium tomatoes
  Choose ripe, but firm tomatoes. Slice each into 4-6 wedges, leaving the seeds in.
• 2 cups of diced cucumber
  Choose old fashioned field cucumbers, peeled and deseeded, tender ones with skin and seeds, or a combination of both.

Toss together the following ingredients and mix gently by hand or with a spoon:

• 2 tbsps finely sliced red onions or shallots
• 2-3  spring onions, whites only, sliced into 3″ strips
• 2 green chillis, sliced and deseeded
• Fresh coriander and tender mint leaves. Don’t chop them
• 2 tbsps lime juice
• Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients and let them sit for 20-30 minutes. That’s enough time to allow all the flavours to meld.

The beets should have a nice bite to their sweetness. The tomatoes, in addition to sharing and absorbing flavours, will have acquired an amazing fluorescent orange-pink hue. The cucumber and onions will take on a pretty shade of pink, but still retain their crispness. The herbs and onions drape themselves around at random and make this salad good to the last bright drop!

With a boiled egg on the side, this is one of my favourite summer meals.

Serve lightly chilled.