I love having a vegan salad for supper like the ones I’m sharing the recipe for today. One of my favourite vegan cheeses is Herbies sourpress. It is made by a local company, a small family-run business, so it’s not available in supermarkets. Alternatively I’ve used vegan Greek cheese, similar to feta, and that works really nice too. The vegan alternative to feta/Greek cheese is very realistic, I am impressed with how close the cheese is, regardless of the company who makes this kind of cheese. The sourpress I used in this recipe is a bit different, has a very unique texture and it is similar to a type of cheese I liked in Romania – branza de burduf – but which is not found on the UK market, so I don’t think many know about that.

This is a very simple recipe, of course. The most important thing for a recipe this simple is that the ingredients are fresh. The pepper should be freshly grounded, the salad should be washed and patted dry with a tea towel before making the salad, but with care, so it will not bruise.

For crunchiness I’ve added some fried onions, but, alternatively, you can chop some cashew (use fairtrade*), peanuts, or any other kind of nuts. There are some nut mixes too, savoury, which would work nicely just as well.

Ingredients for 2 servings:

– 60g lamb lettuce
– 60g Herbies sourpress cheese
– fried onions
– 2 spoons olive oil
– black pepper
– Nigella seeds

Wash and pat dry the lamb lettuce.

Put the lettuce in two bowls, crumble the cheese in your hands and toss it on top of the salad, sprinkle the rest of the ingredients. The salad is ready to be served.

Do you eat salad? What kind of cheese do you prefer in salads?

* Cashew, when processed, can be very damaging to the hands of the women who are doing that. So, make sure you spend a bit more but you are buying fairtrade, which means they are not under pressure to produce as much in an hour and they can use gloves to protect their hands. There is plenty of information online about this if you want to investigate further.