lettuce Archives - Page 2 of 2

pick and mix salad

A curious blend of salads here, a hybrid of two of salad-loving Jamie Oliver’s recipes: the Mad Dog salad from Jamie’s America and cheese and onion salad from Jamie at Home. I love meals like this: every forkful brings new delights. Crunchy, chewy, fresh and wholesome. Go get some.

Pick and mix salad:

2 avocados, de-stoned and cut into pieces

A swig of pumpkin seed oil

A big bag of plain tortilla chips

100g cheddar, grated

Small handful of pumpkin seeds

Small handful of pine nuts

1 large romaine lettuce, torn into pieces

2 red onions, sliced

Extra virgin olive oil

White wine vinegar

200g feta, diced

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.

Put the avocado on a baking tray and splash with pumpkin oil. Add a little salt and pepper and roast for 15 minutes.

Scatter the tortillas in one layer on a baking sheet and toss over the cheddar, pumpkin seeds and pine nuts. After the avocados have had 10 minutes, pop this lot in the oven for the remaining 5 minutes.

Cover the onion in white wine vinegar and a pinch of salt.

Toss the feta and romaine together. Scrunch the onion up with your hand and add this to the lettuce mix. Dress all of it with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Scatter some tortillas on the bottom of a plate, add some salad and poke some pieces of avocado in there. Grab a final handful of tortillas, nuts and seeds, crush them a little with your hand and sprinkle over the salad.

caesar salad

One of my absolute favourites. Regular readers may have twigged that I adore dishes that totally celebrate their ingredients, and allow each one to stand up and be tasted whilst adding to each other simultaneously. This is my take on a classic Caesar salad.

I hope Mr. Cardini will excuse me altering his recipe, but his core flavours are still there. As our house is veering away from raw egg at the moment, I can’t get the oil / egg emulsion so instead the sauce is a blend of garlic, good olive oil, white wine vinegar, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and white wine vinegar. I add a few flakes of parmesan to help give the sauce some thickness, where the egg usually would help. I whizz all this up in a blender.

I’ve used turkey here, simply because it was on offer, which is griddled alongside some bacon until those pretty brown stripes appear. When done I whip those off to one side and then lay some thinly sliced bread drizzled with oil on the pan, soaking up meat juices and charring slightly. I then chop some cos lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes and toss this with the Caesar sauce. The rest of the ingredients go in, then top with parmesan. Crunchy, satisfying and tasty.