November 2007 - Cucumber, spring onion & goat's cheese salad

Woo Hoo! Two posts in two days, so glad to be getting these done. Although I will have to do two tomorrow so that I can get them all in before the end of the month. I have had  a bit of a lazy day today and probably should have had this done before now, but better late than never I guess. 

This was the last of the three issues that I was missing when I first started going through my collection. I think it was also the first issue that I managed to pick up on ebay. While I had looked through it when I first got it, I didn't really read through it as much as I would have had I had it when it was first released. It is a lovely issue with some great food in it. 

Valli's Tequilla chicken with pink grapefruit salad looked so wonderful and I am sure it would have been terrific. I have a recipe for marinating steak in a tequila, lime, chilli and olive oil which is just fantastic. There were two reasons that I didn't make this one, first is that tequila is really expensive, especially the nicer stuff that you would want to use in these dishes. There is no point using the cheap stuff, I drank plenty of it when I was younger, and it is just rocket fuel. It really wouldn't be very nice in the dish. The other reason is that I cannot have grapefruit as it interferes with medication that I take. 

Nigella's Anglo-Asian Lamb salad also looked terrific. A lovely combination of Thai and English ingredients. The redcurrant jelly would add a lovely hint of sweetness but still tart at the same time. It seems a great addition in place of probably palm sugar. I think that the addition of some pomegranate to the salad with some sprouts, snow or sugar snap peas, capsicum, cucumber and some halved cherry tomatoes would fill out the salad a bit. I don't think I could come at it as the recipe reads as a main meal you really could add anything you wanted to fill it out though. 

I, instead, made another side salad to go with the Chive & Beetroot Couscous and curried honey chicken. I ended up making Patricia Wells' Cucumber, spring onion & goat's cheese salad. It was okay. Nice and refreshing but I am finding that I prefer goat's cheese in a cooked dish or with stronger flavours. I found it just a bit over powering for the delicate cucumber flavour. I replaced the cream in the dressing with natural yoghurt to lower the fat a bit but also because that is what I had on hand. It is probably not one that I would make regularly. 

Cucumber, spring onion & goat's cheese salad

Serves 4

Ingredients: 

• 1 telegraph cucumber
• 3 spring onions with bulbs, trimmed 
• Goat's cheese 

Dressing: 

• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 cup light thickened cream (I used about 1/2 c. natural yoghurt)
• 1/3 c. finely chopped chives 

Method: 

• Peel sections of the cucumber, but leave some peel for decoration, cut in half and deseed and slice into half moons. 
• Finely slice onions. 
• Combine all ingredients for dressing. 
• Toss cucumber, onions and 3 - 4 tbsp of dressing. 
• Serve with goat's cheese.