This is a really easy dish to make, and super delicious to serve as a light meal or on the side for a bbq or somewhere else where meat is involved. The only thing you have to promise to do is use really good quality olive oil.

I have two kinds of olive oil, a giant tin that I cook with and a tiny ‘gourmet’ bottle that I dress with. I don’t mean I wear it, I mean I use it to dress salads, dip bread into etc, because it tastes a lot different to the other oil (and costs about the same for about 1/10th of the size!). So if you want to impress your friends, or today, your Valentine, go and get some really expensive olive oil, like this Frescobaldi Laudemio…

Ingredients
1/2 pumpkin chopped into small cubes (no bigger than 2cm)
Roughly 4 big handful’s of rocket
2 kinds of olive oil
Handful of pinenuts
Slice of feta cheese cut into cubes

Method
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Heat some regular (cheap) olive oil in a baking tray for a minute. Add your chopped pumpkin and cook for roughly 30 minutes, turning at least once.

Heat a little regular oil in a fry pan on low heat, add pinenuts and move around for no more than a minute. Don’t walk away or leave these nuts otherwise they will burn quickly.

Put the rocket into your favorite salad bowl, throw in the sliced feta and top with the pinenuts, try not to include much of the oil. When your pumpkin is ready add that and then drizzle over the good (expensive) olive oil. Mix everything for a minute, you want the heat from the pumpkin and pine nuts to start working on the feta and even the rocket. Season well with salt and pepper.

Impress your loved one, maybe with some oysters (I know, it’s a cliché) and some champagne…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!