teaching dad to cook flapjack

The Half-Blood Orange Salad

Now is the final fling of the Tarocco blood orange from the slopes of Mount Etna, in Sicily. These are often referred to as being only half blood, because of their part-pigmented bloody interior and surface flecked with red blushes. These beauties contain the highest concentration of Vitamin C in any fruit.

Blood oranges have suffered from being re-branded, as was the former Chinese Gooseberry (aka kiwifruit), and sometimes goes by the name of a Sangria orange, which ironically translates from the Spanish as "blood".

This salad marks the transition from winter into spring and requires no dressing as the citrus juice from the blood oranges, the beetroot's roasting juices and the olive oil that gets splashed on at the end, do it all by themselves in the bowl.


2 blood oranges, peeled into segments
small bunch of beetroot
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
100g chickpeas, cooked
bunch coriander
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Scrub the beetroot and cut into chunks of just over 1cm square. Place in a roasting tin with the fennel seeds and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Mix together and roast in the oven for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile place the rest of the salad in a serving bowl. When the beetroot has cooked, sprinkle it, still warm, onto the salad. Drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over the salad, season with salt and pepper and some torn coriander leaves. This is lunch in a bowl with some hummus and bread.