What’s cooking today: Beetroot & pomegranate salad

The need to do some serious writing has brought me to the Boekehuis in Calvinia in the Hantam Karoo for a while, where between doing my job I’m using extracurricular time to get the first draft of a memoir down. This has been coming all my life, ever since I was a kid who loved beetroot salad.

In one of the two local supermarkets, I spied a vacuum-wrapped pack of cooked beetroot. All peeled and ready to use. That went into my basket before the tannie next to me could blink.

I also bought some ordinary mayonnaise, and back at the house I had Rozendal fynbos vinegar, which is sublime, the Banhoek chilli oil that I’d brought from Cradock, sundry spices including ground sumac, and crushed coriander seeds.

In the back yard, the part of the werf where there’s a small orchard of fig, quince and pomegranate, I picked the only ripe pomegranate I could find. I hope my hosts Alta and Erwin Coetzee, who also own the Hantam Huis here and the beautiful Rupert Huijs next door to the Boekehuis, won’t mind.

Here’s the salad I concocted with those elements.

(Serves 2, so I put some in the fridge for the next day)

Ingredients

Method