Sugar Snap Pea and Beetroot Salad

I made a salad out of my sugar snap peas for a Melbourne Cup BBQ we went to yesterday. I forgot to take a photo of it until we got to the BBQ and I didn’t want to look like one of those people who take photos of every meal they eat so they can share it on Facebook and clog up their “friends” news feeds with crap that no one cares about. So I took a stealthy, out-of-focus, crappy photo of the salad still in the green shopping bag, but you get the gist of what it looked like.

Ingredients:
Salad
Sugar snap peas, strung (two small bowls full as seen in my previous post)
Baby spinach (a man-sized handful)
Baby beetroot halved or quartered (I was lazy and just used a 450g can of whole baby beets)
Full fat feta, 100g crumbled
Walnuts (a child-sized handful), broken into smallish pieces
Dressing
1/4 cup honey
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tbs olive oil

Method:
Place salad ingredients into a bowl. Toss to combine. Mix dressing ingredients together. Pour over salad just prior to serving.

Perfect summery salad for a warm Melbourne Cup Day party, made all the better after the horse with the jockey who had the pretty horseshoe jumper on won (I always choose my horses based on name, number and/or the prettiest jockey jumper). If only I put money on it!

So cheap, easy and refreshing

Super fast, super easy, super cheap summertime meal.

Ingredients
Bow tie pasta
2tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 bunch asparagus
2 cups sugar snap peas (mine are home grown)
90g danish feta
2 tbs lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
Italian herbs

Method
Cook pasta for 2 mins less than instructions say. Snap off woody ends of asparagus and cut into 2cm long pieces. String and halve peas. Crush garlic. Heat oil in large fry pan and add garlic, asparagus, salt and pepper. Stir on high for 3 mins. Add peas and stir for few seconds. Add strained pasta to pan along with 1/2 cup reserved water. Add Italian herbs (I used basil, oregano and tarragon). Stir mixture for one or two minutes then remove from heat. Place contents of fry pan in large bowl. Add lemon juice and crumbled feta. Serve immediately.

Note: I actually used 4 tbs of olive oil in mine but I think this is too much so I’ve written 2 tbs for this recipe but depends how much you like olive oil! To add some more intense flavour and colour a few sundried tomatoes would go nicely, but I actually like the simplicity of this dish the way it is. The sugar snaps stay so crispy and sweet and the other flavours compliment that and don’t overpower the peas.