Roasted Pumpkin Arugula Salad with Apples, Walnuts and Goat Cheese + Blood Orange Cinnamon Pear Vinaigrette

This recipe was developed for Pour Olive.

What started out as a simple side of roasted pumpkin took on a whole new meaning last weekend when I whipped up this salad. The crisp Fall air is certainly getting to me because all I can think about are the flavors of Autumn! Cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin...with gingerbread and peppermint peeking around the corner. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

I started out by roasting a sugar pumpkin and the rest just fell into place. I plated up some fresh arugula, sliced fuji apples and walnuts. I crumbled some goat cheese atop the greens and the roasted pumpkin, still slightly warm, made the goat cheese nice and creamy. I added some fall flavors to my Pour Olive pantry stock and the Blood Orange infused olive oil and Cinnamon Pear balsamic were begging to marry together. This made for a delicious pairing and each bite was bursting with the flavors of Fall! Make this for an October dinner party or add it to your Thanks

For a pretty presentation, plate these salads individually with dressing on the side.

For the Salad
Fresh organic baby arugula
Fuji apple, thinly sliced
Walnuts
Goat cheese, crumbled

Roasted Pumpkin
1 sugar pumpkin, sliced into wedges
olive oil for drizzling
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Cut pumpkin half and scoop out seeds until it's clean. Keeping the skin on, cut pumpkin into wedges. Place pumpkin on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil along with a tiny bit of salt and pepper. Bake pumpkin at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until pumpkin is easily pierced with a fork, but not mushy. 

To prepare pumpkin for salads, slice off the skin and chop into large chunks.

Blood Orange + Cinnamon Pear Vinaigrette
1/4 cup Pour Olive Blood Orange infused balsamic
1/8 cup Cinnamon Pear balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper, to taste

Whisk olive oil and balsamic together briskly until emulsified. Season with salt & pepper, then drizzle onto salad. 

For an orange cinnamon vinaigrette with regular olive oil and vinegar, try adding orange zest to your dressing and sauteeing the walnuts in brown sugar and cinnamon.