roasted fruit salad with gorgonzola and maple balsamic dressing

This is actually a fall salad, but oh well. I've been really temporally disoriented lately. It combines roasted fruit with spinach and maple balsamic dressing. I am a huge fan of roasted fruit and feel like it's something that should be incorporated into recipes more frequently. Some walnuts or pecans would also be a nice addition to this salad. There's some prosciutto in the photo above, but this is entirely optional and I added it mostly because I had some leftover from making fig and prosciutto pizza.


Ingredients

Salad
1 pear, cored and sliced into 6 pieces
1 apple, cored and sliced into 6 pieces
2 portions of spinach
gorgonzola
1 T olive oil

Dressing
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T maple syrup
2 T extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Preheat oven to 350.

To make the dressing, whisk the maple syrup and balsamic vinegar together in a small bowl. Continue whisking as you slowly add the oil. Season with salt and pepper.

For the salad, heat 1 T olive oil in a sauté pan to medium high heat. Brown the fruit in the oil for about 4 minutes on one side. Remove from the pan and place them in a baking pan. Roast in the oven for about 8 minutes, until soft. (You can also use a toaster oven.)

Dress the spinach with enough dressing to lightly coat the salad.

Plate the salad by topping each portion of spinach with gorgonzola and roasted fruit.

(serves 2)