Endive and Arugula Salad

This is a very simple salad dish to make and looked lovely in the book, so I thought I would have it as the first course for my March Adhoc At Home supper evening.  The bitterness of the endives and arugula is offset by the sweetness of the peach dressing.

Recipe calls for a Peach Puree that you can make ahead of time.  It's basically mashed peaches with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Peach Puree cooking with sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon

This is what it looks like after it's pureed and cooled off.

Finished Peach Puree for Salad Dressing

I couldn't find red Belgian Endives, so I went for all white ones.  Local market's produce guy told me that the taste is basically identical just the color looks slightly different.  He says it's very rare for them to carry the red ones.  After trimming off the ends repeatedly, we put the endives in ice water to chill.

Belgian Endives in cold water

The rest of the salad is very basic so I forgot to take more detailed images.  Dressing consists of the peach puree plus shallots, flat leaf parsley and a sherry vinegar.  The crunch in the salad is supposed to be the Marcona almonds, but I substituted pistachios instead because I couldn't find those almonds and it worked out really well in the salad.  Toss together the endives, arugula, peach slices, pistachios and some diced peaches along with the dressing and voila you are done!

Finished salad, looks yummy!

Tasting:
Very light and refreshing salad.   Peach dressing and puree really adds the sweetness needed to balance off the endives and arugula.  I just love the taste of arugula so I would've been fine even without the endives!  I think I could've used maybe only 2/3 of the endives because the portion was rather large even for 6 servings.  Super easy to make, so it's something that can be tossed together even for a week night meal.