One evening, on a phone call to my friend, she informed me she was making a salad from her new Sabrina Ghayour recipe book. She sent me a picture and as soon as I saw it, I knew that I too would have to make that salad within the week. I’m not a copy cat per se, I just appreciate good things when I hear about them!
The salad in question? Cucumber, green apple & nigella salad with feta & dill.
It’s a really nice salad, savoury, creamy and refreshing. Somehow, I got a real kick out of mashing the feta and mixing in the Greek yogurt. I don’t know why. It felt like something I should have been doing for years but now I’m going to catch up on!
Sabrina [author of the recipe] suggests that this salad could be paired up with her fragrant fish cakes with preserved lemon mayonnaise. On the Saturday evening that I made the salad, I thought that that was what I was going to do. However, when I looked at the instructions I realised that there was too much to do in the time available (i.e. Ignacio had just come back home from work and was hungry).Instead I took out some frozen haddock, hiding at the bottom of the freezer and baked it with salted butter, mixed herbs and fennel seeds. Very nice.
So nice I made the salad again, this Bank Holiday Monday. This time we ate it with the Date and Ginger Chicken wings recipe from the same recipe book. More niceness…
Lol – there are plenty of chicken wings left. I think I will be making the spiced tumeric mash potatoes to eat the leftovers with tomorrow, for the working from home lunch. It feels like I’m playing tag with the recipes. But it’s good I think. I can make these recipes easily because I now have many of the ingredients in my cupboards as stock and my local Tesco and Sainsbury’s are walking distance so it’s very easy to get the ‘fresh’ ingredients that I need (butters, cheeses, yogurts, fruits and vegetables).
Ingredients
Serves 6 – 8
100g feta cheese
3 tablespoons Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons nigella seeds
2 Granny Smith apples, cored, halved and sliced into half moons
1 large cucumber, peeled, halved lengthways and seeds scooped out, then cut into 5mm – thick slices
1 small packet (about 30g) of dill, finely chopped
Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
1 spring onion, sliced diagonally, to garnish
olive oil, drizzling
Instructions
Mash the feta into a paste in a mixing bowl. Add the Greek yogurt, a little salt and a generous amount of pepper and mix together well.
Add 1 ½ teaspoons of the nigella seeds, the apples, cucumber and dill, then toss the ingredients in the feta mixture until evenly coated.
Arrange the salad on a serving platter, sprinkle over the remaining nigella seeds and garnish with the spring onion, then drizzle with a little olive oil before serving.
Reference: Simply, Sabrina Ghayour, Page 48
