Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 350g strawberries, hulled, halved or quartered if large
- 400g watermelon, peeled, deseeded, cut into 1cm dice
- 150g cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 100g mixed baby salad leaves to include pea shoots and lambs lettuce
- Small handful of Thai basil/ordinary basil leaves, stripped from stems
- 16 mint leaves
- Finely grated zest of 1 lime
- 100g feta cheese, drained, crumbled into small pieces
- 40g piece of parmesan, cut into shavings with a vegetable peeler
- 2tbsp toasted pine nuts
- 1tsp sea salt flakes
- 1 vanilla pod, slit lengthways, seeds scraped from pod
Dressing
- 2tbsp white balsamic vinegar
- 4tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- Little freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Add the strawberries, diced watermelon and tomatoes to a bowl. Add the salad leaves, tearing any larger pieces into bite size, 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.
Top 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 then sprinkle over hulled strawberries, add to homemade strawberry jelly, meringue or shortbread.
Recipe courtesy of Seasonal Berries.