Signature Salads

There's lots of variety out there.

What follows in a list of ingredients that falls into three categories, your existing store cupboard and the freezer and then fresh produce in season. It's not meant to be exhaustive merely to illustrate what you can produce with a little forethought. Some of the ingredients you may have already, others you might like to add.

Extend your store cupboard ingredients to include, jars of black olives – sliced or whole, pitted. Tinned chickpeas and cannellini beans. Bags of croutons, walnuts and pistachios, sultanas and cranberries. Chorizo sausage in loops or ready diced – check out the cheaper supermarkets for good deals. Pomegranate molasses, sweet chilli sauce, sumac and nigella seeds. Cheeses like feta, Wensleydale, and halloumi generally have good use by dates too.

Staples in your freezer, chicken fillet, petit pois and salmon steaks.

Fresh and fabulous at the moment, broad beans, Jersey Royals/Cornish new potatoes, avocado, green beans, asparagus (tail end of season) smaller stems, Little Gem/Romaine lettuce. Little Gem lettuce makes perfect “boats”. Serve a bowl of the boats alongside your huge salad so you can load them with your favourite stuff.

Are you with me so far. What follows are suggestions for suppers as small or as large as you wish adding whatever ingredients you love.

Add toasted pistachios (toast them in a dry frying pan until golden) and toasted pitta bread cut into strips to lend a “Lebanese Fattoush” style flavour to your salad.

Broad beans – you'll hate me for this but it's vital that you blanch them – i.e. bring water to the boil, add the beans, bring back to the boil – 2 minutes only then drain and run cold water to refresh, leave to cool. Peel the outer skin to reveal the bright green bean.

To achieve “smoked chicken” poach chicken fillets in chicken stock for 6/7 minutes. Allow them to cool in the stock. This is an inexpensive way of smoking chicken and if you check out the cost in the supermarket you'll find it's eye watering. Thank you for this fantastic tip found in The Ivy The Restaurant and its Recipes.

Remember the recipe for honey roast beetroot served hot back in the Kitchen investments and Wednesday supper – serve it cold in your salad. The Asian Spiced Salmon recipe works equally well.

To help you on your quest I'm attaching four recipes you may find useful, Pomegranate Dressing, Chicken Rub, Chicken with Pomegranate and Walnut Sauce and Smoked chicken salad. I appreciate they are all chicken – they don't have to be!

And finally, a smidge of information for those who might not be aware. Sumac is a dried ground fruit – it has a sour flavour, lemony. It forms part of the Zaatar spice blend used all over the Middle East. Nigella seeds – also known as black cumin or onion seeds. The seeds have an oregano like taste, used in Indian/Middle Eastern cooking and can be used without dry roasting although the roasting does enhance the flavour. 

Have fun!