This warm and flavourful recipe from chef Harriet Mansell, of new Lyme Regis restaurant Robin Wylde and BBC2’s Great British Menu, makes for the perfect Winter salad

Harriet Mansell’s Warm Watercress and Roasted Plum Salad
Ingredients
- 2 bunches watercress
- 200 g tahini
- 50 ml coldpressed rapeseed oil
- 20 leaves mint
- 1/2 clove garlic
- 1 lemon
- 50 ml raw or live apple cider vinegar
- salt
- 2 – 3 plums
- 100 g high quality Feta
- 1 tbsp Pumpkin seeds
- 1 tbsp Sunflower seeds
- 1 tbsp Sesame seeds
- Aleppo chilli flakes
- 1 tsp fine seaweed flakes
- Zest of half an orange
- Maldon sea salt flakes
Instructions
- Sprinkle plums or stone fruit with a light sprinkling of crushed maldon sea salt flakes and leave for 10 minutes.
- Add all seeds to a baking sheet into an oven at 180C for 10 minutes or until golden and toasted
- Remove, and quickly blitz or roughly chop together, adding a pinch of maldon sea salt flakes, 1/2 tsp aleppo chilli flakes (or more if you like it a little bit more spicy), the seaweed flakes, and finish with some fine orange zest
- Make dressing: Add to a blender – 200g tahini, 1 bunch chopped watercress, 20 leaves mint, 1/2 clove garlic, 1 tsp salt, 50ml cold pressed rapeseed oil, 1 squeeze lemon, 1 ice cube and 1 – 2 tsp apple cider vinegar – blitz, and then adjust acidity and salt to taste, until it really ‘pops’ – it’s a dressing so you want it to be very well seasoned – and zingy.
- Place plums into a thick based pan or griddle, and cook until they take on some char marks and start to go jammy. When cooked, set aside and then re-warm when you are ready to serve the salad.
- Wash the other bunch of watercress, and place the leaves in a bowl – drizzle with a splash of rapeseed oil, a squeeze of lemon, a pinch of salt and toss together, then start to divide onto the two serving plates.
- Build the salad by layering together the leaves, the green dressing, the furikake style seed mix, the stonefruit and the crumbled feta.
Chef Harriet Mansell’s new restaurant, Robin Wylde, opens at 63a Silver Street, Lyme Regis on 31 October 2020. Drawing on the West Country’s enviable array of natural ingredients and producers, the menu will shine a light on the region’s world-class seafood and the incredible grown local produce that benefits from the southerly climate as well as sea herbs, seaweeds and more. Alongside its wines, Robin Wylde will offer diners a broad selection of other drinks, including ales, ciders, spirits and meads.
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