Salud Napa’s Beet Salad Recipe

The family behind Ceja Vineyards has a new video blog emerging!  Entitled Salud! Napa, they are just beginning their online journey, but soon will be a “bicultural cooking show” embracing world cuisine, a wine portal, and a social networking site.  Already they are featuring several delicious cooking videos, and all dishes are paired with recommended wines from their vineyard. Truly enlightening, learn about their delicious success story here.

We’ve developed a recent love affair with beets, and immediately fell in love with their video featuring Chef Gerry Castro preparing an easy beet salad with a fresh herb vinaigrette.  Using boiled, peeled, and sliced beets, he dresses them with oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped shallots, salt and pepper, served over parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil.  He pairs it with an elegant 2007 Ceja Napa Carneros Chardonnay.

A tiny morsel of food trivia on the herb CHERVIL, for those not familiar.  It truly is an under appreciated herb in the states, however is quite the player in French cuisine. A component of “Green Goddess” dressing, this member of the parsley family has a delicate flavor with a touch of anise.  It also behaves as a catalyst in bringing out the flavor of other herbs.  The dried version is not of much use as it is fairly flavorless.   Chervil has a very short life, and will only be useful for about 2 days in the refrigerator.  Can’t find it?    The closest substitute is parsley combined with tarragon, which are already in this recipe, so don’t worry!