Upscale compost salad makes a nice dinner

For dinner tonight, I decided to continue on with the citrus theme of today, though pomelo and blood oranges replaced the lemons of earlier fixation. As I totally grooved on the shaved fennel a few days back, I wanted that to show itself again, and anyway, fennel is nice with both beets and oranges. Et voila! Roasted beets, thinly sliced citrus, fennel, avocado, aged goat cheese, and a sherry vinegar-orange-dill vinaigrette. It was light yet satisfying, especially as I paired it with some of those never-ending biscuits toasted all nice and warm. This required a bit more work and thought than my general compost salads, but the underlying rationale was much the same.

T home in less than an hour!!

It is good, beets perfect

This is a hit over here. It's not often that I see Jack act so "teen boy" (not least because he's just 5 and a half, but I see corollaries between the two age groups)- he was stuffing his face and minimally grunting answers to "do you like it?" and so forth until his piece was gone. There's only about half left, and it's mere hours old.  For the icing, I decided to merge my ideas and made a powdered sugar-lemon juice glaze into which I whisked some lemon curd. This is fantastic, and I posted the recipe for both it and the cake.

Miraculously, the beets emerged from their long stint in the oven perfectly cooked and will make a nice base for a salad tonight!

Lemon cake looks fab

Ooh la la...I couldn't find a lemon cake recipe that really hit the spot, so I used one of Ina Garten's and went from there. My changes included: using Meyers in place of regular lemons and a little bit more of both zest and juice than she called for; using St. Germain liqueur in place of vanilla extract; using half whole wheat pastry flour instead of 100% all-purpose; and adding in some crème fraîche to complement the buttermilk. I'm either going to make a powdered sugar-lemon juice glaze or a lemon-curd based icing of sorts to go on top. I have high hopes for this and hope it doesn't disappoint...will let you know!