Warm tomato and goats' cheese salad with hazelnuts
- Prepare
- 1-2 hours
- Cook
- 10 to 30 mins
- Serve
- Serves 4
- Dietary
- Egg-free
Deep-fried chunks of goats’ cheese and confit cherry tomatoes star in Anna Haugh’s textured winter salad.
For this recipe you will need a cooks' thermometer and a deep-fat fryer.
Ingredients
For the warm tomatoes
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 100g/3½oz fresh root ginger, half peeled and half unpeeled, thinly sliced
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 2 red chillies, split lengthways
- 2 lemongrass sticks, smashed
- 1 litre/1¾ pint vegetable oil
- 20 cherry tomatoes on the vine, cut on the bottom, do not cut all the way through
- 5 tbsp red wine vinegar
For the goats’ cheese salad
- 100g/3½oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1 goats’ cheese log, torn or cut into chunks
- 50g/1¾oz hazelnuts, finely chopped
- 100g/3½oz panko breadcrumbs
- 1 tbsp runny honey
- salt
For the greens
- 200g/7oz Russian kale
- 100g/3½oz rainbow chard
To serve
- 1 tbsp nibbed hazelnuts
- oil from the warm tomatoes (made above)
- red wine vinegar, to taste
- 1 tbsp cumin seeds
- 1 tbsp poppy seeds
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds, toasted and crushed
Method
To make the warm tomatoes, preheat the oven to 240C/220C Fan/Gas 9.
Put the garlic, ginger, thyme, red chilli, lemongrass and oil into a saucepan and heat until it reaches 95–100C on a cooks' thermometer. Gently simmer for 3–4 minutes.
Put the prepared cherry tomatoes into an ovenproof dish and pour over the flavoured oil (including all the aromatic ingredients in the oil). Pick out and discard the lemongrass, thyme and chillies.
Place into the oven for 5 minutes. The tomatoes are ready when the skins have spilt.
Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 20 minutes. Add the vinegar and set aside to rest.
For the goats’ cheese salad, combine the flour with a pinch of salt and 200ml/⅓ pint water in a large bowl. Mix to form a smooth batter.
Mix the hazelnuts and panko breadcrumbs together on a baking tray. Dust the chunks of goats’ cheese all over with flour, then dip in the batter and finally coat in the hazelnut and panko mixture. Allow to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oil in a deep-fat fryer to 180C. (CAUTION: hot oil can be dangerous. Do not leave unattended.)
Place the coated goats' cheese in the deep-fat fryer for 1–2 minutes, or until golden brown. Drizzle with the runny honey and set aside.
To make the greens, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Cook the kale and rainbow chard for a minute. Drain well and place into a bowl.
To serve, remove the tomatoes from the ovenproof dish and set aside. Remove all the aromatics from the tomato oil and place in a bowl along with the nibbed hazelnuts, vinegar, cumin, poppy and coriander seeds. Mix well.
Dress the cooked kale and rainbow chard with the flavoured oil. Place the dressed greens onto a plate along with the fried goats' cheese and warm tomatoes.
