Salads like this are an assortment of spring. I have combined some of my favourite ingredients to create this crunchy spring salad. Feel free to add your own twist and to use what is available to you.
Crunchy spring salad
Serves 4
Ingredients
2 bunches asparagus, woody endsremoved
250g baby spinach
handful flat leaf parsley, leaves only
1 medium red onion
½ tsp sugar
1 lemon, juice only
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 flatbreads, roughly torn
1 tsp sumac
pinch sea salt flakes
30g pinenuts
Method
Bring a pot of slightly salted water to the boil. Add the asparagus and cook for 2-3min or until just tender. Remove and plunge immediately into ice-cold water to stop cooking, then drain.
Place the baby spinach and parsley leaves into a serving bowl and chill until required.
Finely slice the onion into rounds and place into a small bowl, sprinkle over the sugar and squeeze over about 1 tsp of lemon juice. Set aside for at least 10min, drain, reserving the onion.
Heat the oil in heavy-based frypan, add the flatbread and fry until golden and crispy, remove and drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with sumac and sea salt.
Add the pinenuts to the oil and fry until golden and crisp. Remove and set aside.
To assemble the salad
Scatter over the lightly pickled onion, toasted bread and pinenuts, season lightly with sea salt flakes and when ready to serve squeeze over the remaining lemon juice and a little oil from the frypan.
Serve immediately.
• This recipe comes from Alison Lambert, chef at the Otago Farmers Market.
