We are in love with full-meal salads in the OtherWorldly Kitchen, and I scramble every week to come up with a couple of new and memorable offerings. However, it’s challenging to make a dinner salad  if seafood, poultry, or meat is not included.

Enter the indispensible log of mild goat cheese. It’s always on hand in my kitchen, because it lends itself to so many dishes. I wouldn’t want to be without it.

Luckily, the Northwest is home to some of the best goat cheese makers in the country (or the world for that matter). Some of these are highlighted at the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project and in the informative book, Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest by Tami Parr. For this salad I used one of the Rivers Edge chèvres, Up In Smoke, which is a fresh chèvre wrapped in maple leaves, spritzed with bourbon, and then lightly smoked. The flavor is lush and evocative.

I’m not sure what made me include potatoes in this salad, other that they look so appealing this time of year, freshly dug, in the farmers markets. Or maybe it was to ensure that MauiJim wouldn’t be raiding the frig an hour after eating dinner.

Regardless, the combination of roasted potatoes, butternut squash, and sweet pimiento pepper is sensational with fresh rosemary, salad greens, Candied Spiced Walnuts or Pecans  and Honey Mustard Vinaigrette. It’s almost a bonus that the salad is also beautiful.

Roasted Fall Vegetable Salad with Warm Goat Cheese & Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

One of my new favorites, this fall salad has a lot going for it: contrasting flavors, textures, and temperatures; an array of fall colors; and dynamite taste.

Vegetables
1 pound small Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed, and cut into 4-8 wedges, depending on size of potatoes
¼ butternut squash, seeded, peeled and cut into wedges about the same size as the potatoes
1 sweet pimento pepper or red bell pepper, cored, seeded, ribbed, and cut into wedges about the same size as the potatoes
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1 clove garlic, peeled, and minced or pressed
2 tablespoons cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Honey Mustard Vinaigrette (below)

Goat Cheese
two 1-inch thick slices of fresh, mild goat cheese from a 2-inch diameter log
2 tablespoon all purpose flour
2 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs or panko
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil

Salad
2 large handfuls of baby salad greens

Garnish
½ cup Candied Spiced Walnuts or Pecans, coarsely chopped
2 small sprigs of fresh rosemary

1. To prepare the vegetables for roasting, in a large bowl toss together the potatoes, squash, pepper, rosemary, garlic, oil, salt, and pepper.
2. Arrange vegetables evenly on an edged baking sheet. They should not be overlapping.
3. Roast at 350° for about 15-20 minutes, until vegetables are tender and beginning to caramelize. Remove from the oven and let cool. This step can be completed a few hours ahead, in which case refrigerate the vegetables and bring back to room temperature before serving.
4. Prepare the vinaigrette (below) and refrigerate.
5. To prepare the goat cheese, in a small bowl, whisk together the flour, bread crumbs, salt.
6. Just before serving, coat each slice of goat cheese in the flour mixture. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a small skillet and sauté the goat cheese rounds for about 2 minutes on each side, or until nicely browned and warmed through.
7. While the goat cheese rounds are cooking, in a large mixing bowl, toss the salad greens with enough of the vinaigrette to coat each leaf. (You will have vinaigrette left over for a couple more salads later.)
8. Remove the goat cheese rounds from the sauté pan and pat lightly with paper towels to remove any excess oil.
9. Arrange the warm goat cheese in the middle of 2 large pasta plates, and then arrange the dressed greens around them.
10. Quickly toss the vegetables with a little of the vinaigrette and tuck them into the greens in each of the salads.
11. Top each salad with Candied Spiced Walnuts or Pecans, freshly ground black pepper, and a sprig of fresh rosemary.
12. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 dinner-size salads.

Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

I almost always have this lovely vinaigrette on hand in the fall. It complements fall’s abundance of apples, pears, winter squash, toasted nuts, and baby greens and winter greens alike. For an even more pronounced apple flavor, use apple syrup rather than honey. Make a double batch if you like. It keeps for days in the frig.

9 tablespoons cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons natural process apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons honey or Lopez Island Farm Apple Syrup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, peeled, and minced or pressed
½ teaspoon fine sea salt

1. In a small bowl or glass measuring cup, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, honey, mustard, garlic and salt until emulsified.
2. Taste and balance sweetness (honey), acidity (vinegar), and salt.
3. Pour vinaigrette into a squeeze bottle, cap, and refrigerate.  

Makes about 1 cup.