Another very versatile throw together salad, light and fresh reminding me of the summer days to come.

The only cooking or prep really is with griddling the courgettes, getting a nice char really adds flavour around which the salad can be built, looks great too.  Whilst perfectly edible, some people feel uneasy about eating raw courgette so it’s a little more appetising to cook them for this salad.

Serves 2

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 courgette

• 8 cherry tomatoes, halved

• ½ a can (or about 200g drained weight) cannellini beans

• 80g of ricotta

• ¼ red onion, thinly slice

• About 12 pitted black olives

• 80g rocket or other salad leaves

• Small handful of mint and parsley, roughly chopped

• 30g pine nuts

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• ¾ tablespoon red wine vinegar

Instructions

1. Put the griddle pan on high heat and whilst it is heating slice the courgette lengthways at about 3mm thickness then brush the strips with olive oil on both sides.

2. When the pan is up to heat, place the courgette into the griddle pan. I put mine in the pan straight, but it can also look quite nice to put the strips in on the diagonal which gives a nice char running down the courgette on an angle. Try not to move them, allow that char to develop.  After about 4 minutes flip and griddle the other side. You’ll be able to judge whether to adjust the cooking time based on how charred the first side is.

3. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan on a medium to high heat. Give them a shake and keep an eye on them as they colour very quickly. It’ll probably take about 2-3 minutes.

4. Make the dressing by mixing the rest of the olive oil with the red wine vinegar, mint, parsley and a pinch of salt and pepper into a big salad bowl.  

5. Once the courgettes are cooked, lay the strips in to the dressing and add in the salad leaves, chopped cherry tomatoes, olives, cannellini beans and red onion and gently toss.

6. Plate up the salad and top with the pine nuts and scatter some dollops of ricotta on top.  Taste it first, but if you feel a little extra zing and freshness is needed, a squeeze of lemon can be a nice touch.

Tips

Feta rather than ricotta works really well too.

I often don’t have mint, other good options are dill, basil, coriander or just parsley.

If you don’t have cannellini beans, chickpeas work really well as does couscous.