Apple and Hazelnut Salad with Pomegranate seeds and syrup

Pomegranates are the Miss Scarlet of the fruit world. They have that distinctive beauty with a bit of an edge. Slicing into their treasure-trove like flesh you unearth mounds of deep red jewelled seeds doused in blood-coloured juices.

Put them in any old salad to brighten it up a bit. They go really well with apples and rocket. In this method the apple and the toasted hazelnuts give it a sweet but refreshing crunch and the crumbles of salty cheese provide a lovely contrast to the fruit and sweetish pomegranate syrup. There is so much juice spills out of these that it makes sense to capture it and make the dressing from it.

Choose a cheese of your choice but the saltier ones work well like grilled halloumi or feta. Although, here I shaved in some Swaledale, which was delicious. I used the cows milk variety, but they do many more made from Ewes and Goats milk that are equally as lovely.

Ingredients:
3 large handfuls of Rocket
Half a large pomegranate (1 if small)
Half a red onion
60g/2 oz Hazelnuts (again about three handfuls)
1 small apple such as Cox
1 tsp honey
1 tsp demerara sugar
1 tbp Olive Oil
150g Cheese, (either grilled Halloumi, feta or Swaledale)
Sea-Salt and Black Pepper

Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees C

Roughly chop the hazelnuts and put them on a baking tray and in the pre-heated oven for about 10-15 minutes; until the hazelnuts are golden brown.

Cut you Pomegranate in half, save the rest for later. Get a sieve over a small pan, crush the pomegranate half over the sieve so all the juice runs out into the pan. Make sure it's completely squashed out and cleared of all the seeds and juice, (push on the seeds in the sieve with the back of a spoon to release the juice but don't crush them too much as you need these for later).

Put the pan on a low heat and stir in the honey and sugar. Stir this through for about 5 minutes until you have more of syrupy texture. Set to one side to cool.

Lay your rocket out on a large plate. Thinly slice your red onion half and break the slithers up over the rocket.

Cut the apple into thin disc slices from one edge, then cut the disks, slicing vertically into little match-stick shapes with a sharp knife. Scatter over the rocket.

Get the Pomegranate seeds in the sieve, remove any white pieth, and scatter over the salad. Take your hazelnuts out and shake them over too. Turn the leaves a few times to mix through the different ingredients.

For the cheese. If it's Swaledale shave it into slithers with a potato peeler over the top of the salad. With Halloumi slice the block into 5mml thick piece and grill in a hot pan with a little olive oil. Drain on kitchen paper and tear up into the salad. For feta just crumble it in your hands over the salad.

Go back to the dressing and stir in the olive oil and salt and pepper and spoon it all over the salad. Add a few more sprinkles of sea salt and black pepper to the salad before eating.