Lentil, Goat's Cheese & Toasted Walnuts Salad

This recipe is doing the rounds. About a week ago it appeared on Good Housekeeping on line. I then thought  "hmm, Janice is coming for diner, she loves lentils, there is a bit a goat cheese in the fridge and this recipe looks easy, just the ticket"

The difficult part was to protect the goat cheese from being eaten, I considered labelling it "precious, do not touch" like other food bloggers do when they need to keep something for a photo or a dish but that  is the the house style and does not sound too friendly, so I took my chances and the cheese remained

Then the recipe appeared on twitter, Merchant Gourmet were reminding us that not only they can help with Christmas & chestnuts but they are here too when we are dreaming of salads but the weather is blooming too cold for a spring spread.

Now I would like you to pay attention to the sauce, the honey complements nicely the flavour of this salad but does not give it a sickly sweet taste really a nice combination, the original includes baby beetroots but we don't do betroots in this dwelling. In case you do just add 2 balls cooked baby beetroots but not the kind in vinegar sliced into matchstick.

Bon appetit.

Lentil, Goat's Cheese & Toasted Walnuts Salad

Ingredients

Serves:4

• 3tbsp olive oil
• 1tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1tsp dijon mustard
• 1tsp clear honey
• 250g cooked Lentils
• 2 x 110g bags mixed herb salad leaves
• 150g (5oz) soft goat's cheese, crumbled
• 50g (2oz) hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped

Method

 1 First, make the dressing: put the oil, vinegar, mustard and honey into a small bowl. Season and whisk together.

2 Put the lentils, and salad leaves into a large bowl. Drizzle with the dressing and toss well. Divide among four plates, then scatter with the goat's cheese and hazelnuts to serve.