Sweet summer salad

Salad Summer

Serves 4

For this sweet salad, good nectarines and cheese are essential here. The beetroot dressing is dazzling red. Rather than keeping it discrete, as here, you can also toss the ingredients in it.

Follow the recipe

Ingredients

1	small beetroot (or ready-cooked beetroot)
20g	honey
15g	dijon mustard
1	garlic clove
25ml	cider vinegar or 15ml white wine vinegar
	salt and pepper
120ml	olive oil, plus extra to finish
40g	whole almonds, skin on, roughly chopped
10g	butter
1	endive
4	small nectarines
20g	rocket
120g	gorgonzola, broken into pieces

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Wash the beetroot, wrap it in foil and bake for two hours, or until very soft, then peel.
To make the dressing, put the beetroot, honey, mustard, garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper in a food processor. Process for a few seconds, then incorporate a quarter of the oil at a time. It should be smooth and homogenous.
Sauté the almonds in butter and a pinch of salt for three to four minutes, then set aside to cool. Trim the base of the endive and carefully separate the leaves. Halve the nectarines, remove the stone and cut each half into three wedges. To assemble, spoon some dressing in a circle in the centre of a serving plate. Top with four or five endive leaves, hollow side up. Drizzle with oil and arrange the nectarines, rocket and cheese inside the leaves. Drizzle more oil around and about, and sprinkle with almonds.