All the condiments salad

Show an interest in cooking and chances are you will have condiments, biscuits and oils coming out of your ears by the time Christmas is over. I’m not complaining. It’s the best excuse to try things you would never normally buy and to experiment a bit more with some of the products out there.

In my attempts to pick away at the ‘condiments beast’ some more I roughly chopped a whole load of Kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, and sun-dried tomatoes, tossed them with garlic, fresh thyme, toasted breadcrumbs, rocket and landed myself with this killer of a salad. It’s unique and really very tasty.

This also works really well with a simple salad of boiled new potatoes, coated in a little organic mayonnaise, sea salt, pepper, a squirt of lemon and a few snips of fresh chives. The breadcrumbs stick to the mayonnaise on the potatoes and give them a really lovely coating.

150g breadcrumbs (from stale white bread)

Small bunch of fresh thyme

Sea salt and black pepper

100g sun-dried tomatoes

100g Kalamata olives

180g artichoke hearts

2 large garlic cloves

1 small bunch of rocket

1. If they're not already, finely blend the breadcrumbs in a processor or with a hand held blender. Heat some remaining olive oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes (about 150mls worth) in a large non-stick frying pan.
2. Add the bread crumbs and shred the fresh thyme into the mix along with plenty of grinds of sea slat and black pepper.
3. Roughly chop the sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. Peel and roughly chop the garlic and pop the olives from their stones.
4. Once the breadcrumbs are golden drain onto kitchen paper and set aside.
5. Add a little more oil to the pan and add the sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, olives, and garlic to the pan to cook for 2 minutes. Stir well.
6. Add half the breadcrumbs and stir together.
7. Layer this mixture a couple of times in a serving bowl with a few handfuls of rocket and some of the remaining breadcrumbs.