Beet Salad

My friend Ripley makes this amazing beet salad. He gave me the recipe but it took me four, yes four, times to finally make it work. The problem was getting the beets to cook through. His recipe said to bake them, but boiling them is best I later learned and it takes 45-60 minutes to really get them soft depending on the size.

Here is the Barefoot Contessa version of this salad. She calls for canned beets (bleh!!), please use fresh ones. You can use any color beet but I find the red ones a bit strong but the color is really nice in the salad - ideally you'd use a mix of colors. You can also add feta or goat cheese and I had this salad at Pasta & Co. the other day with blue cheese and walnuts which was also good. I also put orange wedges in this salad too which is a nice variety of color and texture.