A Summer Dinner Party: Caramelised Walnut, Goat's Cheese and Orange Salad, with Sourdough Croutons

What to have at a dinner party when it's really hot - and you don't really feel like standing in a sweltering kitchen? Salad. It's the obvious answer, perhaps, but it can be tricky finding a salad that's enough to constitute a full main course! This one, however, I have tried out on three hungry men and they all seemed to approve...although this time I cooked it for my two sisters-in-law and a female cousin-in-law. One of the sisters-in-law is a professional chef so I was a little intimidated, but she left saying she was inspired by it, so I'm taking that as a compliment! I found the recipe on a snippet from a magazine I'd cut out ages ago, and have amended it slightly.

It might not be the prettiest...but it is totally delicious!

What makes it so lovely is the combination of crunchy sourdough and the tangy goat's cheese along with sweetness of the walnuts and summery-ness of the orange. This recipe does involve a little cooking, but it's so easy and low maintenance that it's totally bearable in the summer heat...

Ingredients - enough to feed 6

• 100g walnut halves
• 4 tablespoons clear honey
• 4 thick slices of sourdough bread, cut into crouton sized cubes
• 2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
• 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 10 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 medium sized oranges
• 400g salad leaves
• 250g goat's cheese, cubed

Heat oven to 200C.

1. Peel the oranges using a small sharp knife and cut them in to small segments. Transfer any juice that collects on the chopping board during this process into a small pan - this will form the basis of the salad dressing later!

2. Mix the walnuts with two tablespoons of the honey, and then spread them out on a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper - or alternatively, put them on a silicone baking sheet. In the pictures below I experimented with using foil, but it didn't work brilliantly!

3. Also place the sourdough bread cubes on a baking tray / in a roasting tin and drizzle a little olive oil over.

4. Place both trays into the oven for 15 minutes, checking them half way and turning the trays to make sure that the walnuts and bread are evenly browned.

Click to enlarge.

5. While the walnuts and sourdough bread are in the oven, prepare the dressing. Add the remaining honey, mustard, vinegar and oil to the pan with the orange juice. Stir, heat slowly and season.

6. Assemble the salad. Put the salad leaves in a large bowl and add the orange slices, sourdough croutons, goat's cheese and walnuts. Toss gently with the salad dressing.

Tip: if the walnut halves are too tricky to remove from the tray, place them back in the oven for a minute to soften the honey slightly.

We followed the salad with the raspberry baked cheesecake I've posted about before. I don't often repeat recipes so quickly, but the husband requested it! This time, I made it in a slightly bigger tin (although using the same quantities as in the posted recipes), left it in a little longer (I forgot...!) and dressed it up a bit...

I'm cooking for another dinner party tonight (got to make the most of the dying days of the summer holidays!), but something totally different: chocolate chilli chicken followed by lime souffles: check back later to see those recipes!

A Musical at Somerset House and a Cheese Board...

My husband always teases me about being signed up to too many email newsletters, but this summer (perhaps for once...?!) it has really paid off as being signed up to Somerset House updates meant we got priority booking for their summer screenings. I'd never been to an outdoor film screening before (it is so often COLD in the evenings during an English summer that they didn't used to happen that much) and this seemed the perfect time to go as they were showing 'Guys and Dolls'. I love musicals and used to have the 'Guys and Dolls' tape when I was little; it probably was also the first musical I ever heard as my parents went to see it in the West End when my mother was pregnant with me (and that probably explains a lot).

You can take supper with you to eat there and considering there's an amazing cheese shop just down the road from where we live I thought it'd be appropriate to take a cheese board and some super tasty bread (I settled on potato and rosemary bread from Gail's).

Here are my picnic cheese board suggestions...

The film, plus the cheese, bread (and later some home made cookies) and a whole pile of blankets and cushions to keep us warm, made a lovely summer's evening!

The Wonders of Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi - a recipe recommendation

My favourite gnocchi are the ones featured in the Polpo cookbook, where you make an amazing cavolo nero sauce to accompanying (sounds weird, tastes delicious). To me, however, these seem more of a wintery food...perhaps because I got the cookbook for Christmas and first made them in that fallow period after boxing day, when I'd come back home. I also made them while singing along to 'The Sound of Music Story' documentary - but perhaps that's not something to be proud of!

BUT there is a great, more summery, and speedier to make, version of gnocchi. It's probably healthier too. I like to think that anything involving spinach is immediately healthy and perhaps that's not always the case, but these are definitely lighter than the usual potato filled gnocchi and it's really satisfying to watch them float to the top of the pan once they're cooked.

Here's a basic overview of the steps:

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi
(click the picture to enlarge!)

They make a delicious summer lunch, or a light summer supper...or you could have them as a starter.

The recipe itself is here.

A Saturday Summer Lunch

An Unhealthy Salad and an Adult Take on a Childish Pudding!


                      

                                           Camembert and Bacon Salad and Pimmsicle

This salad I found in a 'Good Food' cook book I was given ages ago. It's as uncomplicated as its name suggests - chop up some Camembert, grill some bacon (until it's extremely crispy if you're like me!), fry some chunky white breadcrumbs (yup, this is definitely unhealthy), add to salad along with a white vinegar and mustardy dressing.

Pimmsicle is actually a name conjured by my husband; the ice lolly's official name is English Summer Cup. The lollies were really easy to make; I went for the ginger beer option. Although you can't see it in the picture there was mint in them too, making them a super refreshing end to a meal!