A green salad features almost every third day in the Saucy Dressings household. So I keep a selection of ingredients which I can throw in at the last minute to give a bit of variation. This salad comprises three of these ingredients all at once…. and if you were feeling beneficent you could add in a fourth of my stalwarts – some fried lardons – for good measure.

Recipe for a salad of crispy croutons, prawns and marinated feta

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 200g/7 oz marinated feta (go here for how to do this – ideally you want a day or so, but half an hour will do at a pinch!)
• 80g/3 oz croutons/a handful – homemade are by far the best – follow this link for how to make them – ideally they will be hot when you add them to the salad leaves
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed with 1 tsp smoked salt
• 100g/4 oz/about 14 baby plum tomatoes
• 1 small bag of lettuce – washed and dried.
• juice and zest of half a small orange
• a small posy of basil leaves
• olive oil for frying
• 200g/7 oz cooked, frozen prawns

Method

1. Defrost the prawns.
2. Oil a medium-sized frying pan while you cut the tomatoes in half.
3. Fry them cut side down, over a quite high heat, until the cut side is just starting to char.
4. Reduce the heat, and add the garlic and defrosted prawns. Fry gently for three or four minutes.
5. Add the lettuce to a salad bowl, or platter. Sprinkle over the croutons, and the contents of the frying pan. Then distribute over the cubes of marinated feta (retain the oil). Tear over the basil leaves.
6. Zest the orange, retain the zest. To the juice of the orange add about four times (about 6 tbsp probably) the volume of oil from the marinated feta.
7. Pour all over, distributing as fairly as you can, the salad.
8. Garnish with the orange zest, and serve with a flourish!