Summery Salad

I picked up some lovely organic pork meatballs from Waitrose (who can resist a 'reduced' bargain these days?), at the time I was thinking of a rich stew spiced with cumin, coriander and cinnamon to eat with a mound of cous cous and a dollop of yoghurt (serious comfort food) . Alas, the weather was having none of it, after sweating it home on the tube, the thought of cooking a stew and then eating was not appealing.

Off I went to the cookbooks and came back with this recipe from Delicious magazine. A fresh and summery salad of sweet peas, broad beans, crunchy radish and meatballs made by splitting open sausages and rolling them into balls. View this as completely open to interpretation - we used what we had in the fridge for ours, some thinly sliced fennel, peas, lettuce and red onion along with the lovey meatballs.



What brings the whole thing together is a generous scattering of mint and parsley and a deeply flavourful dressing made from (a lot of) anchovies, garlic and lemon juice.

Leave out the meatballs and this is a great side salad or try it grilled chicken or fish and here you could add capers for extra zing. I must admit I also mixed the leftovers with some bulghar wheat for my lunch - perhaps a little unorthodox but the extra carbs bulk it up and make it a little more exciting for lunch rather a leftover soggy salad.

Dressing
1 garlic clove
4tbsp olive oil
6 anchovy fillets, chopped
juice 1/2 lemon

To serve:
1 small bunch of mint and parsley, roughly chopped

To make the dressing, heat the anchovy fillets and olive oil gently until the anchovies melt, now add the garlic and lemon juice and some black pepper.



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Haloumi, fennel and pomegranate seed salad

You'll have to forgive the slightly hazy photos, they were taken when my friends Kat and Jamie came for dinner, they are not so used to the obligatory 5mins spent trying to take a good picture, so these were taken in haste.... I digress, the point is, this salad is great! Its actually a recipe from Waitrose, you know those little recipe cards you get in supermarkets? Except the Waitrose ones tend to be quite good.

Its a salad of fennel, leaves, haloumi and pomegranate seeds with a sour cream dressing. I've only recently come round to the idea of fruit in savoury food, but here, with the salty haloumi and garlicky dressing, it works really well.

This is the Waitrose recipe, I've also given my own below as I did it slightly differently and didn't faff about putting the fennel in iced water etc.

Ingredients

Serves 4
1 fennel bulb
100g yoghurt, sour cream or creme fraiche
1 small clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 handfuls salad leaves - watercress or rocket are good
Juice of ½ lemon
1 pack haloumi, sliced
seeds of 1 pomegranate

Use the biggest plate you have, spread the leaves across the bottom. Cut the fennel in half lengthways through the root. If there any leafy fronds, finely chop these and add to the plate. Cut off any old looking ends of the fennel and slice as finely as you can. Sprinkle these over the leaves. Mix the yoghurt, lemon juice and garlic and season well. Set aside. Now heat a frying pan or griddle and fry the haloumi for a couple of minutes on both sides, lay the haloumi on top of the salad and drizzle over the dressing before sprinkling judiciously with pomegranate seeds. Read more...