salad

scrummy warm rocket salad

servings
4

method

Warm salads can be blooming amazing or a complete disaster. First, you have got to get your hungry guests around the table before you plate up, so as soon as their bums are on the chairs, you are tossing the warm ingredients in with the rocket leaves. Boom, boom, boom on a plate and it's in front of them.

Peel, halve and quarter 2 medium red onions, then quarter again, to give you 8 pieces from each onion. Heat a frying pan and fry off 8 whole rashers of pancetta or smoked streaky bacon until crisp. Remove, add a couple of lugs of olive oil to the pan, and add 4 sprigs of thyme, the onions and a good handful of pinenuts with a pinch of salt. Toss around and fry on a medium heat for about 5 minutes until caramelized and sweet (not black!). Put your pancetta or bacon back into the pan, toss around, then throw everything into a salad bowl with 4 big handfuls of rocket or any nice salad leaves. Drizzle generously with balsamic vinegar – this will make a natural dressing as it mixes with the olive oil. Serve with some shaved Parmesan over the top – you can use a potato peeler to do this. Munch away.

• from Happy Days with the Naked Chef

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1. by faith on Wed 14 Sep 2011 @ 14:45

sounda good..but i used white onion instead of red...

2. by Gary on Tue 13 Sep 2011 @ 09:46

Sounds great- is there anything I can sub for the pine nuts- allergic to nuts. Cheers G

3. by Nikki on Tue 06 Sep 2011 @ 20:42

Absolutely delicious and so easy - made mine a large plate for dinner. Thank you!

4. by Frances on Mon 02 May 2011 @ 18:11

I made this for my family today, everyone was licking their plates and wanted more. Even my fussy-eater five year old sister loved it! Jamie, I salute you :)

5. by kerrie gardiner on Tue 14 Oct 2008 @ 16:49

food glorious food

6. by JP on Mon 13 Oct 2008 @ 16:25

crikey people couldn't you figure out for yourself what to do with the onions instead of nitpicking and being rediculours.
thanks for the idea Jamie .

7. by the lovable matt on Mon 06 Oct 2008 @ 09:25

fish

8. by Jamie Yu on Sun 05 Oct 2008 @ 14:34

That's true though... but this is besides the point!!! Rockets is one of my fav and same to the balsamic :) Perfect combi

9. by Stees on Sun 05 Oct 2008 @ 09:59

"Peel, halve and quarter 2 medium red onions, then quarter again, to give you 8 pieces from each onion. "

That should be : "then halve again, to give you 8". If you would quarter a quarter of an onion you'd end up with 4x4=16 pieces. You want to halve the quarters to end up with eight.

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