Cold Weather Salads

I have a complicated relationship with salads. I tend to associate them with someone making a statement. Usually it feels like that statement is 'I don't like real food', but I know that's a bit harsh. There's a whole weird moral dimension where eating a salad makes you 'good'. As in 'yeah, I don't give to charity and my hobbies include burglary and stabbing, but I'll have the salad cos I'm trying to be good'. Pffft. Whatevs.

I may have got distracted there. My point is that there are cultural expectations of what a salad should be, and tasty isn't one of them. But really aren't they just big bowls of whatever is in the fridge? And isn't that just the sort of cooking I go in for? So aren't I just getting up on my high horse for nothing? You don't have to answer that.

Since the gods are angry with us and have cursed us with an unending winter, I've been making specifically cold weather salads. They're big and hearty enough to be a proper meal, but messy enough to still technically be a salad, I guess.

Squash, Chickpea and Goats Cheese Salad

Nothing suits the cold weather so much as a bit of spice, and the squash and chickpeas are great spice-carriers so you can really push the boat out here. You will need:

1 butternut squash, or whatever type of squash you prefer
1 can of chick peas
1 log of goats cheese
1 large bunch of coriander
Lemon juice
Chilli oil
Cumin
Ginger
Paprika
Cinnammon
Salt and pepper
Mustard seeds
2 sausages (optional)

Slice the squash into pieces about 1cm thick, and either grill or griddle them in olive oil until soft. Reserve the seeds, and dry fry them with the mustard seeds.

Put the drained and washed chickpeas in a bowl. Add the chilli oil, chopped coriander, squash seeds, lemon juice, and the spices in whatever quantities you prefer (start with about 1/2 a teaspoon of each and go from there).

Spread the chickpeas on a plate. Mix the grilled squash in the dressing left behind from the chickpeas, and put that on too. Finally, spread little chunks of goats cheese over the whole thing. If you're particularly hungry, and/or have leftover sausages in the fridge, they won't go amiss here either.

This has a really lovely Moroccan feel to it. The squash itself is already quite fruity, but I imagine pomegranate seeds would push it in a lighter direction.


Pork croutons, blood orange and feta salad

Remember when I made that roast belly pork? And I said to keep the fat for all sorts of things? Well this is one of those things. Honestly, white bread fried in pig fat is a thing of beauty.

You will need:

Pork dripping (or some other sort of delicious fat)
Stale bread (I used half a stale baguette, but about 4 slices of regular bread will do)
1 bunch / packet of rocket
2 blood oranges (regular oranges will do)
1/2 packet of feta

This one requires much less fiddling than the squash salad. Just fry the bread, peel and chop the oranges and dice the feta, and mix everything together. You don't need a dressing as the juice from the oranges is plenty. Have I mentioned that I love blood oranges? It's a fruit that bleeds! I can't get enough of them, and they're in season* at the moment.
*'In season' means 'currently availble at the grocers'.

I'm really pleased with this salad. The croutons soak up some of the juice from the orange and brine from the feta which stops them being too greasy. If you're going to eat fried pig bread, this is the way to do it.