Strawberry and summer leaf salad with vanilla salt recipe
This is a real taste sensation: fresh fruity British strawberries, thirst quenching watermelon, cherry tomatoes, summery pea shoots and baby leaves tossed with crumbled feta, shaved parmesan, toasted pine nuts and sea salt flakes mixed with vanilla seeds and a white balsamic dressing for an incredible finale.
Cook's tip: Vanilla salt also tastes great sprinkled over grilled seabass fillets, steak or for the more adventurous types add a little sprinkle of this to vanilla ice cream.
Don’t throw away the scraped vanilla pod; add it to a jam jar and top up the jar with caster sugar, screw on the lid and leave for a week for the vanilla to flavour the sugar. Sprinkle over hulled strawberries, add to homemade strawberry jelly, meringue or shortbread.
Ingredients
For the dressing- 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 sprinkling freshly ground black pepper
- 350 g strawberries, hulled and halved, or quartered if large
- 400 g watermelon, peeled, deseeded, cut into 1cm cubes
- 150 g cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 100 g mixed baby salad leaves including pea shoots and lamb's lettuce
- 1 handful Thai basil (or normal basil if you can't get Thai), leaves stripped from stems
- 16 mint leaves
- 1 lime, finely grated zest only
- 100 g feta cheese, drained, crumbled into small pieces
- 40 g piece of parmesan, shaved with a vegetable peeler
- 2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
- 1 tsp sea salt flakes
- 1 vanilla pod, slit lengthways, seeds scraped from the pod
Details
- Cuisine: British
- Recipe Type: Salad
- Difficulty: Easy
- Preparation Time: 15 mins
- Cooking Time: 0 mins
- Serves: 4
Step-by-step
- Add the strawberries, diced watermelon and tomatoes to a bowl. Add the salad leaves (tearing any large pieces into bite size bits), basil and mint leaves. Sprinkle over the lime zest, feta, parmesan and pine nuts.
- Mix the salt flakes with the vanilla in a small bowl. Whisk the balsamic vinegar and oil with a little pepper together for the dressing then add vanilla salt and dressing to the salad to taste and toss together. Serve immediately.
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