We all have our go-to health recipe for days when we feel we need a bit of a boost – and this is most definitely mine. The combination of flavours is insane, and will leave you wondering how we ever spent years equating salads with rabbit food in this country.
The salad itself takes only about eight minutes to prepare, and while the sweet potatoes take a bit longer they're completely worth it... it's healthy, it's easy and it's absolutely delish. Enjoy.
Pre-heat your oven to Gas Mark 6/200C, then lay out your ingredients. (Don't actually chop the pomegranate until you go to use it... it's messy, and I actually only did that for the photo. I'm sorry.)
Wedges can be a bitch, so just chop your sweet potato into clean and even strips. You're much more likely to get consistency that way.
Mix them up in some light olive oil and lash on a few spices – paprika, cumin or (dare I say) the pre-made BBQ mix from Sharwoods works a treat. Stick them in the top shelf of the oven, then get salading.
There are a lot of bitty ingredients here, so big spinach leaves can make this salad really awkward to eat. What I do is throw all the spinach down on the chopping board, and just go at it with a knife to make a nice fine mix. Few bigger leaves can be added to give it some volume, but really you want these pieces nice and fine.
Right. The messy part. The part involving the fruit that has no regard for human convenience: the pomegranate. I know you can get these in trays, but they're much more expensive and not half as tasty... so accept your fate, and start by quartering the little prick.
Wear something red here. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, attempt to extract the seeds from a pomegranate if you're wearing your wedding dress – particularly before the ceremony.
Get them all into a bowl, and try get as much of the membrane out of there as possible – it's got a nasty bitter taste that won't help your finished product.
Right, I'm done with you. You little bollocks.
Into the salad bowl they go. Good idea here to use a large mixing bowl, as there'll be a lot of swirling around to do in order to get this salad homogenous and consistent.
Toast the pumpkin seeds - just throw them on to a pan at a high heat, and be careful to keep moving them or they'll burn and they'll ruin your salad, your day and quite possibly your entire life.
Crumble about a third of a block of feta into the mix, and then throw in the piping hot toasted seeds.
Avocados are second only to pomegranates in terms of pain-in-the-assery, and even selecting the right one is a culinary challenge in itself. But once you've found it – the one pictured here is a little bit overripe, I'll admit – chop it up into nicely sized blocks, and add to your salad.
Juice half a lime. Just the one half should do it.
Throw in the lime juice, and a bit of black pepper if you feel like it.
Voila. Serve up and impress your friends, family and that former teacher who always said you'd never amount to nothing in life.
