Baked sweet potato and pecan salad

This is a robust and fit for chilly autumn kind of salad; with the slow baked sweet potato and feta. The crunchy toasted pecans, zingy lime dressing and crisp spinach leaves lift it and prevent it from being too stodgy. There is also a real fusion of new flavours in this salad. I used to think pinenuts were the only nuts worth pairing with sweet potato, but since they accidentally shared a moment with toasted pecans here I don't think I'll ever look back.

Having said that, pine nuts probably work better with it as a summer salad dish, when the potatoes have been boiled in honey water and toasted on the BBQ afterwards, where as baking it with crunchy salty, sweet pecans gives it a suprising contrast and depth of flavour. Unique and, most importantly tastes amazing.

Ingredients:
4 medium sized sweet potatoes
150g / 5 oz pecans
200g/ 7 oz feta
250 / 9 oz baby spinach leaves
3 tbsp golden syrup
4 limes
2 garlic cloves
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
100ml of good vegetable stock
5 tbsp olive oil
2 tsps brown sugar
Sea Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Pre-heat the oven to 180 Degrees C, Gas mark 4. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the ginger.

Get a small pan on the hob and squeeze in the 4 limes and golden syrup. Place on a low heat and stir for 2 minutes until they combine. Throw in your ginger and garlic and give it a stir. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper.

Stir for a few minutes more, add the boiled vegetable stock and take off the heat and allow to cool. Whilst this cools, peel the sweet potatoes and cut in half, then in half again length ways and across at 2cm intervals to make nice big chunks.

Get a large baking tray ready and line it with grease proof paper to stop the potato sticking.

Stir the olive oil into your dressing.  Toss half with the chunks of sweet potato and tip on to the tray. Cover tightly in tin foil and place in the pre-heated oven for about 40 minutes or until the potato is soft so you can stick a knife through it.

Whilst these are cooking roughly chop your pecans and get another small pan on the hob on a medium heat. Dry fry the nuts in there then add some more seasoning and the sugar. Keep an eye on these and keep tossing them about as they will burn easily. Once browned nicely set aside.

When the Sweet potato are just about soft and good to eat crumble over your 200g of feta and remove the tin foil and pop back in the oven turning the oven right down to 80 degrees C/gas mark 1. After 5 minutes take this out. The feta will have melted but leave it to cool and it will harden with a nice baked flavour.

Build the salad on a large serving plate with handfuls of the spinach leaves tossed with chunks of sweet potato, scrape in the cooled crumbled feta, toss in handfuls of the pecans, and drizzle a spoonful or the remaining dressing made earlier. Repeat until you have no more left. Serve with some warmed ciabatta or foccacia to make a nice light meal.

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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.

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