Halloumi, avocado and strawberry salad

Inspired by a recent visit to Juliet’s (my favourite Tunbridge Wells café) this salad is the perfect accompaniment to grilled or barbecued meats; tonight it is going to sidle up to a grilled lamb chop from Speaight’s butcher. To me, supper doesn’t get any better than this! However, this salad would also make a delicious and nutritious lunch. Hope you like it as much as we did!

Ingredients

• half a block of haloumi chopped into 4mm slices
• 1 little gem lettuce
• 1 ripe avocado
• 2 sticks celery chopped into crescents
• 1 or 2 spring onion sliced finely
• 6 strawberries cut into sixths
• fresh mint leaves torn into pieces
• balsamic vinegar and XVOO to dress
• sprinkle of pink peppercorns because they look nice

Method

1. Place the haloumi in a medium-hot frying pan and dry fry until it’s gently golden on both sides.
2. Wash and dry the lettuce and place in a salad bowl.
3. Slice the avocado, celery, onion and strawberries and arrange on top of the lettuce
4. Add the mint leaves, peppercorns, vinegar and olive oil.
5. Serve.

Variations

You could alter the herb to make it work better with different protein choices, e.g. chicken/tarragon, fish/coriander. It could also work well with mango, fig or pomegranate in place of the strawberries.

I also made a dressing in my Nutribullet with some fresh mint leaves, 4 cherry tomatoes, some XVOO, some sherry and a pinch of salt. It was FAB!