Beetroot and orange salad

This is a really delicious and simple way to make a salad from fresh beetroot. Roasting the beetroot maintains more flavour than boiling and requires minimum effort. The sweet dense beetroot flavour is a great match for the tangy orange segments and lime salad dressing I have included here.

Ingredients:
3 medium sized fresh beetroot
half red onion
1 blood or navel orange
5 sun-dried tomatoes
50g pine nuts
90 ml olive oil
50 ml wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
Seasoning, Sea Salt and Black pepper
1 teaspoon of soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon of picked fresh thyme leaves

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Wash the beetroot well, trim the top of the leafy stalks but leave a good two inch remaining to maintain flavour whilst they roast.
2. Wrap each beetroot individually in tin-foil and bake in the oven for approximately 1 hour.
3. Whilst they are baking prepare the other ingredients. Peel and finely chop your red onion half, and roughly chop the sun-dried tomatoes. Peel the orange and remove as much pith as you possibly can. Divide into chunks then roughly chop each one in half.
4. Make the salad dressing. Combine: 90ml olive oil, 50 ml of a good wine vinegar such as Cabernet Sauvignon, juice of 1 lime, pinch of salt and pepper seasoning, and 1 tsp soft brown sugar. Put the finely chopped red onions into the dressing to absorb some of the juices and take the harsh edge off them.
5. Heat a small sautee pan on a low heat and add a little olive oil. After one minute add the pine nuts and toss frequently (to avoid burning, as they do quickly!), once they are just golden drain on to kitchen paper.
6. Check beetroot after 1 hour. It will be ready if you can push a dinner knife through easily. Once cooked you may want to use gloves to peel them, however, the red stain comes off easily enough if you don't have any. Completely remove the top and bottom stalks. Peel away the outer skin, this should come off really easily once the beets are properly cooked through.
7. Roughly chop the beetroot into chunks a couple of cm long. Lay the beetroot out on a salad plate, scatter over the orange, pine nuts, then spoon over the dressing and onions and toss it all together. Finally, crumble the feta and sprinkle the thyme leaves over the whole lot.