Halloumi & Pear Salad

OK, there's a little bit more to it than that, but it tastes lovely and is pretty high in protein, so will keep you feeling full for hours.


1/2 Bag of leaves (baby spinach, etc)
Halloumi
1 Avocado
1 Ripe Pear
1 tsp Pinenuts
1 Small red Chilli Pepper
1 Lemon
1 Date
A little oil (rice bran is one of my favourites)
Various fresh herbs (thyme, mint, chives, etc).

Chuck salad leaves in bowl. Whisk up the juice from 1/2 the lemon with some light flavoured oil, salt, pepper and chopped up herbs. Put the dressing to the side to infuse the herb flavours.

Toast the pinenuts carefully in a dry pan. Keep watching it, as letting them burn makes them bitter. As soon as they start to colour, tip them into a cold bowl and let them sit (if you leave them in the pan, they'll continue to cook/burn).

Slice the avocado and pear into nice sized pieces, put each into a bowl and quickly coat them in juice from the other half of the lemon (stops them going brown and icky). Using a pair of scissors if your knife isn't very sharp (they're very sticky), snip the date into little slivers.

Slice the halloumi into a piece each about 1/3" thick (or a cm, if you're working in metric). Let the pan warm up again (a good nonstick pan is great here, as there's no oil or flour needed) whilst you finely slice the chilli/pepper. Put halloumi in the pan with the chilli/pepper shreds, let brown on both sides.


Assembly time: Chuck pear slices onto leaves. Chuck avocado onto leaves. Chuck date slivers onto leaves. Chuck Halloumi piece onto leaf-pear-avo-date combo. Chuck pinenuts on top. Drizzle small amount of dressing on top.


It looks pretty and the taste involves, sweet, sour, salty, hot, savoury, fresh, light, satisfying and, well, it's just lovely!