Here’s a quick and easy recipe for a fabulous-looking salad using seasonal ingredients: some freshly harvested pea shoots from the seeds I planted back in January, the pumpkin we’ve been storing since last autumn, plus some zingy pomegranate seeds (alas, not home-grown – if anyone in the UK has managed to grow pomegranate fruit, I want to hear about it!)

I ate it for lunch with a jacket potato but it would make a beautiful accompaniment to fish, particularly mackerel.

Happy noshing 😉

    PEA SHOOT, PUMPKIN & POMEGRANATE SALAD
Serves: 1 Prep Time: 10 mins Cooking Tim: 15 mins

Salad:

150 g of diced pumpkin
1/2 pomegranate
Handful of pea shoots
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

Dressing:

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
Salt & pepper

Method

Toss the diced pumpkin in the olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in the oven at 200C for 15-20 minutes (check it with a knife – the pumpkin is ready as soon as it softens).

Prepare the dressing by mixing together all the ingredients, then heating in the microwave for 20 seconds to thin the honey. Mix again.

Arrange the pea shoots on a plate before scattering the roasted pumpkin on top.

Squeeze the seeds out of the pomegranate half onto the salad (You probably won’t need to use the whole half of the fruit; I saved the excess seeds and the juice from my half and stirred them into my porridge the following morning).

Drizzle the dressing over the salad.

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