KUMPULAN MASTER BLOG

Watermelon and feta salad- a light refreshing salad, perfect for lunch or as a side dish. Sweet fruity watermelon with feta cheese, cucumber and fresh mint, drizzled with a home-made balsamic dressing. Jump to Recipe I absolutely adore watermelon. Nothing beats it for pure juiciness and it's not overwhelmingly sweet. That makes it perfect to be served with a savoury flavours. The classic combination of feta and watermelon doesn't need too much adding too it. I simply chop some cucumber and fresh mint and then add a little home-made balsamic dressing. And there you have it, the perfect salad for your next BBQ or a nice lunch on a hot day; quick and easy to make.

Warm Mediterranean Couscous Salad with Roasted Aubergine and Feta- a warm, vegetarian salad, perfect for summer lunches. Warm Mediterranean Couscous Salad with Roasted Aubergine and Feta is a new recipe that we have eaten regularly in the last few weeks. It is a light, summery (and vegetarian) recipe that I created to solve two problems 1) I just can't get enough of roasted aubergine and different ways to eat it 2) Britain's hottest weather since 1976 means I just can't face cooking anything heavy. I have used my favourite giant couscous yet again for this recipe, rather than the more conventional kind. It's more substantial and mixes much better with a sauce due to being naturally slippery, rather than having a rough texture. The Mediterranean Couscous Salad is rich with tomato sauce, garlic, onion and peppers and is perfectly topped off with nutty roasted aubergine and some creamy feta cheese. Fresh coriander makes the perfect finishing touch. We have eaten it warm f...

Feta Cheese Salad with Balsamic Dressing- a simple feta cheese salad, quick and easy to make for lunch or a starter, with a home-made balsamic dressing. Jump to recipe With the warmer weather over the last few weeks (and the heatwave that I really wasn't a fan of), all I have wanted to eat is salad. That has encouraged me into looking for a bit more variety in my ingredients. Lettuce, tomato and cucumber on their own gets old fast, and there's really no excuse for a boring salad! This weekend, I was in the mood for something Greek-style and I had a block of feta cheese in the fridge. I added a few delicious salady bits to contrast with the soft saltiness of the feta, whipped up a garlicky balsamic dressing and hey presto- a simple feta salad. The feta really is the star of the dish. If you can't be bothered to roast the peppers you can either put them in raw, or buy roasted peppers in a jar. It's absolutely delicious served as a starter, or with some crackers for lunch...

Mediterranean Summer Salad with lemon and garlic dressing- a bulgar wheat and lentil based salad with beetroot, roasted red peppers and home-made lemon and garlic dressing. I am SO excited about this Summer Mediterranean Salad recipe! It's fresh and so full of summery flavours, I could eat it all day and not get bored. The inspiration for this salad came from a recent visit to a brasserie ( The March Hare, Guildford ) with my parents. It was a really hot day, and their 'Summer Salad' was the only thing that appealed as a starter in that sort of heat. When it came, I couldn't believe what I was eating because it was so delicious. How excited can you really get about a salad? Pretty excited as it turns out! I left determined to create my own twist on the idea. After a week of tossing ideas around in my head, I came up with the Mediterranean Salad recipe I wanted to use. It uses the base idea from The March Hare salad of starting with bulgar wheat and lentils and topping t...

Warm Smoky Bacon Couscous Salad- a warm couscous salad with fresh tomatoes, smoky bacon and smoked paprika. Makes a nice lunch or BBQ side dish. Jump to Recipe I am constantly looking for new things to have for work lunches, especially now my husband regularly works away and needs a packed lunch to take with him. I am very into couscous right now, because it feels summery and a bit lighter than pasta. The key thing with couscous is that, like many grains, you need to add lots of flavour to really make it work. It can be terribly bland otherwise. I wanted to add smoky flavours to this and serve it as a warm salad, so I added smoky bacon and smoked paprika along with fresh tomatoes into the giant couscous. The sweetness of the tomatoes went really well with the smokiness of the bacon. It's lovely warm, served fresh from the pan, but my husband liked it cold as well. As with most grains, make sure you cool this quickly to be safe, and then keep cool. If you do that, it will be safe to...

Tuna Crunch Pasta Salad- a twist on the classic tuna mayo with sweetcorn. Chopped fresh peppers and spring onion add some crunch to this summer recipe. It makes a quick and easy lunch and is Slimming World Friendly. Jump to Recipe Pasta salads get quite a bad rap at times- gloopy, bland and so on, but I love them, especially in summer. It took me a few years to realise how much I loved them though, due to bad experiences at school. This was because there were often pasta salads served in the summer and they were truly revolting; very sweet and always tasted the same, no matter what the ingredients were. I found out later that they had been making the pasta salads with salad cream... I know, the very idea is revolting. Can't believe I ever managed to eat it! Pasta salads can be absolutely delicious, if you get the balance right (and don't use salad cream!) Given that pasta is soft, it works best if you balance that with some other firmer textures. For this pasta salad, I wanted ...

Potato Salad with Bacon- new potatoes mixed with bacon and spring onions and dressed with mayonnaise. A quick and easy summer side dish for your buffet or BBQ. Jump to Recipe I love potato salad, really love it, especially if it's a delicious home-made one with new potatoes. The first time I ever had potato salad, it was a packaged one from a supermarket. Inside were little cubes of almost hard potato, pieces of white onion and a very watery, acidic sauce, which I am guessing was supposed to be mayonnaise. Needless to say, I didn't like it. I was quite young at the time and it was only a few years later, in a Home Economics lesson, when I made a real potato salad for the first time, that I realised it wasn't supposed to taste like that! Last weekend I was making a buffet lunch and I wanted to pep up the side dishes a bit. I started with the Lemon and Garlic Giant Couscous Salad and then moved onto the potato salad. New potatoes, check. Spring onions, check. Mayonnaise, che...

Lemon and Garlic Giant Couscous Salad- a fresh zesty salad, the perfect side dish for your buffet or BBQ. Jump to Recipe This giant couscous salad was one of my offerings at a family party. This weekend was supposed to be my husband's birthday lunch at a local restaurant. After all the organising to get everyone in one place at one time, at the last moment we realised it was the local regatta. Chances of finding a parking space for the booking we had made, were very slim, so on Saturday we cancelled and I started a bake/cook-a-thon to make lunch for everyone at home! I made home-made bread rolls with various fillings, lemon cakes , chocolate cheesecake brownies , home-made houmous , and potato salad with bacon. I was looking for something that would be suitable as a side dish and would double up for people watching their weight, as we had a couple of guests who were in that mode and I know it's difficult. I love side dishes. I am always attracted to them at BBQs, possibly more...