This is a fab vegetarian salad in my opinion that is substantial enough for dinner. Roasting the vegetables and serving it still warm really makes it feel more hearty too. Fennel is one of those vegetables that I don’t often cook with but every time I do I make a mental note to use it more often (then often forget). The aniseed flavour is something I don’t often use and so it’s always a star ingredient that really stands out to me. There are endless substitutions you could make with this salad. I’m a big fan of hazelnuts with cauliflower but walnuts or pine nuts would work equally well. Why not substitute the feta, for goats cheese or fry up some halloumi instead? I have used parsley here, but I think dill would be great or better yet, a mix of the two.

Serves 2:

Time: About 1 hour

 Ingredients

• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped in to bitesize pieces or in to wedges as preferred

• ½ a cauliflower head, broken in to bitesize florets (think about cooking times, the sweet potatoes will take slightly longer to cook and so suggest chopping larger florets than the potato pieces to even things out. Likewise I would suggest you do not chop the fennel and onion too thinly else you’ll find it shrinks and burns.)

• 1 fennel bulb, cut in to half and then sliced

• 1 small red onion, sliced in to moon shape crescents

• Small handful of hazelnuts (skin on)

• 100g feta

 Dressing

This is a rough recipe, please adjust to taste

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 1 tbsp lemon juice

• 3 tsp red wine vinegar

• 1 tsp runny honey

• 2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/ 375 degrees fahrenheit.

2. Lightly toss the sweet potato, cauliflower, fennel and red onion in a little bit of olive oil and lemon juice with some salt and pepper then place on a roasting tray and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes. Turn half way through and cook until the edges of the vegetables are starting to char a little. This just adds flavour but be careful not to let the veg fully burn!

3. Meanwhile make the dressing  by mixing the dressing ingredients together and set aside.

4. About 10 minutes before the vegetables are done, place the hazelnuts on a small roasting tray and roast in the oven, this adds so much flavour to the nuts. You could add them straight in to the main roasting pan, but I tend to find keeping the nuts separate keeps them nice and crunchy rather than softening slightly in the moisture of the other vegetables.

5. When everything is cooked, put add the nuts in to the roasting tray if not already in there and toss all the vegetables around with the dressing.   

6.  Plate up and then crumble the feta on top.