This weekend we had to come up with a salad for a party in our neighbourhood. The theme for the party was seafood, so of course, we had to put together a salad which was to go nicely with the seafood aspect of the main course. After long deliberations we settled on a recipe which we actually developed over the last couple of years, blending
- Bulgarian ingredients like – Bulgarian Sheep Milk Feta Cheese
- Texas flare – roasted with salt and sugar Texas pecans
The ingredients for the salad are relatively simple:
- Organic pre-washed spinach
- Red bell pepper sliced in pieces to your liking
- Tomatoes – we used 3 mid-size tomatoes – preferably organic
- Cucumber – sliced in circles
- Red onion – sliced thinly
- 200-grams of feta (sheep milk preferable) cheese
The roasted pecans are my wife's recipe – she mixes salt and sugar and olive oil and small amount of water
- mix in a baking dish
- 1/4 cup of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- 1 lb of pecans
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 tablespoon water
Roast at 375F convection oven or 400F regular oven; Check after 8-minutes and then 5-minutes later and then every 2-minutes — with each time stirring the mixture; Then take them out of the oven and take them out of the baking dish on parchment paper — otherwise they will stick really strongly to the glass of the baking dish
Cool the pecans
In the mean time crumble the feta cheese in a small bowl; slice the roasted pecans in smaller slivers in another bowl;
When you are ready to serve the salad – mix in a small bowl a tablespoon of salt; 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar; Pour over the salad and toss well; then add the crumbled feta and the sliced pecans and mix again well
You are ready to serve! Enjoy!