After a brief but blitzy gastronomic tour through Johannesburg this past weekend I returned home in need of something healthy – something green. So I made this delicious + scrumptious + sumptuous salad. It’s fresh and easy – just add all the ingredients in a bowl, sprinkle with some salt and drizzle with lemon infused olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I like to serve the baby marrows still warm from the oven and then all the other ingredients at room temperature. It’s crunchy, creamy, tangy and really splashy in flavours. Enjoy.

My favourite shades of green:
+ Irish colour green – I am married to a wonderful man of Irish descent … where everything from the Emerald Isle seems to be green;
+ The green of an olive;
+ The green colour of growing grass;
+ Lime green;
+ … and then the US Dollar green. 🙂

Serves: 4
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Preparation time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

For baking the baby marrow
400 g Baby Marrows
2T Olive Oil
Salt

For the broken-cheesy-olive-melba-toast
Melba toast – decide how many you want – I like plenty
Handful of green olives – chopped
100g Peppery Chevin goats cheese
Squeeze of lemon juice

Other salad ingredients
250g Asparagus (I only had tinned asparagus but fresh asparagus will be first-class)
1 Handful pumpkin seeds
1 Handful pistachios
1 Avocado sliced
Few sprigs of parsley – torn
Lettuce of your choice – I like to use the frilly lettuce for this salad – it looks pretty
Lemon infused olive oil
1 Lemon
Salt

Method
1. Baking the baby marrow: Preheat oven to 180 °C. Coat each baby marrow with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and bake for 30 minutes. Take out of oven and cut length ways.

2. The broken-cheesy-olive-melba-toast: Break the Melba toasts up into pieces. Mix the goats cheese, green olives and the lemon juice together and smear on each piece of toast.

3. Making the salad: Mix all the ingredients together. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle with some salt.

Serve with love.