Tart London: how to make chorizo & fennel salad

Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison serve a finely tuned salad that’s as hearty as it is healthy
Lucy Carr-Ellison14 July 2016

It’s great that Londoners are becoming so much more health conscious, but we also firmly believe in balance. Healthy eating is all well and good but taken too far it can end up as joyless and self-defeating.

That’s why we love this salad so much. It‘s fresh and healthy and packed with veg — but it’s also delicious, filling and fun enough to be the main event at a dinner table rather than a boring side dish.

It’s also perfectly balanced in other ways. You get the spice from the zingy salad dressing, the sweetness from the caramelised fennel and a tang from the goat’s cheese. Texture-wise, there is the soft, raw spinach and the crunch from the nuts (we are big fans of adding roasted chopped nuts to salads). The chewy chorizo lends a smokey, spicy dimension and works well with the other flavours too.

We’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t like it. On shoots we have to think carefully when menu planning as we are not only feeding the models but also the photographic team and crew, who are doing heavy lifting all day and need to eat something hearty. So we’ll serve this with some toasted sourdough, and do a chorizo-free version for vegetarians.

Honestly, even people whose heart sinks at the word ‘salad’ will be content. Try it and you’ll see!

Ingredients (serves 2 as a main course)

6 sweet plum tomatoes

2 tsp smoked paprika

Olive oil

Honey

1 clove garlic, pressed

1 fennel bulb, roughly sliced

6 spring onions, sliced

190g chorizo sausage, chopped

Sea salt and black pepper

200g quinoa

1 tbsp of lemon juice

For the salad dressing

4 tbsp olive oil

Half a lemon

Honey to taste

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Plenty of sea salt and pepper

Salad ingredients

10 asparagus, steamed for

5 minutes, and then sliced

2 avocados, peeled and sliced

Small bunch of spinach or rocket

Handful of chives

2 eggs (boiled for 5 minutes)

100g of soft goat’s cheese

Small bunch coriander

2 chillies, finely chopped and deseeded

Toasted flaked almonds, pine nuts and pistachios, chopped

Yoghurt dip

4 tbsp plain yoghurt

2 tsp ground coriander and cumin

1 clove garlic, pressed

Good pinch of finely chopped mint

Lemon zest and juice

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Method

Preheat the oven to 220C degrees. Place the tomatoes on a tray. Mix together the smoked paprika, 2 tbsp olive oil, a good squirt of honey and the pressed garlic, and drizzle over the tops of the tomatoes. Cook for up to 30 minutes.

On a separate tray, add the fennel, spring onions and chorizo (spreading them out so there’s room between each piece) and sprinkle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Place in the oven for 20 minutes or more, to get the chorizo nicely charred.

Cook the quinoa (making sure it’s thoroughly washed before you do so). We like to add a little lemon juice for flavour. Set aside when cooked.

In another bowl, mix the salad dressing ingredients.

Arrange the asparagus, avocados, spinach (or rocket), chives and quinoa between two plates. Add the sliced boiled eggs to the top and the crumbled goat’s cheese, coriander leaves, chilli and nuts.

Finally, mix the yoghurt dip ingredients in a bowl and serve on the side with a lemon wedge and some toasted sourdough.

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