Chickpea feta salad

Hello everyone, I was very excited this morning as I had finally earned enough points on my Mastercard to redeem a gift. I had picked out a particular gift voucher, so that I could use it to buy a bottle of my favourite perfume, of which I ran out some time ago. I anticipated a quick turn around, so had hopes of wearing my new perfume by the end of the week.

Silly me, thinking it would be so easy.

As I have never redeemed points before I stumbled at the first block - don't know my pin number. So I had to call the card provider, which is always painful as their call centre is located in the US and their call centre staff are painfully polite - I hate speaking to them so much that I actually considered forgoing the perfume for a few minutes. I really, really want it though so I steeled myself, figuring they could give me the new pin number and assist me to redeem the points over the phone. Again, no such luck. I have to wait a week for my pin number to turn up, then go through the whole palaver of registering and trading in my points. It can then take up to 28 days for my gift voucher to arrive!

So sadly I will remain unperfumed for a while yet.

This week's recipe is so good that I searched my blog twice to make sure I hadn't already supplied it. I can't believe I have held it back all this time! I enjoyed this salad for lunch this week (with the addition of some of my left over bastourma you'll be glad to know), but first made it to accompany some chicken wings over Christmas. It is a Bill Granger recipe - I first saw it in Good Living but it is also in one of his many books. I make it regularly and sometimes add different ingredients to it that I happen to have. If you have really good extra virgin olive oil and a homegrown lemon to make the dressing, you will find it sensational.

Have a happy week. Love from Jane xx

Chickpea feta salad

Serves four

What you need:
· 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
· 2 tablespoons lemon juice
· Sea salt
· Freshly ground pepper
· 1 x 400g tin chickpeas, rinsed and drained
· 15g baby spinach
· 1 lebanese cucumber, sliced into four lengthways and diced
· 100g yellow grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, halved
· 50g goat’s or sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

What you do:
1. Place the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper into a bowl and whisk until combined.
2. Combine the chickpeas, spinach, cucumber and tomatoes in a bowl.
3. Just before serving, toss the salad with the dressing and crumble the cheese over the top.