Spring Salad Recipe with Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper

You may have noticed that we don't publish that much in the way of salad recipes on here. Of course, you can use all of our vinegars on your salad, according to what style and flavour you are after. For instance, the Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender is great when you want a sour and fragrant, Oriental feel. The excellent deli of the Year regional winner in Leeds, Haley & Clifford have been using this for many months on their in-house salads, to the delight of their many loyal visitors. And our 2011 Gold** Taste Award Winner, Golden Raspberry & Apache Chilli is perfect for a sweet and heat treat. But, for many, the most popular is our Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper.

My father, Martin, was certainly in a particularly inventive mood when he devised this recipe. He loved his Gin and Tonic with a hefty wedge of lemon; those unfamiliar with his proportions would soon find out that these were certainly NOT "Tonic and Gin!" Another great love of his was the propagation of hundreds of varieties of Basil. In Summer, the poly tunnels in the kitchen garden at our home in Womersley bursted with the aromas of this huge variety, from Purple Ruffles Basil to Cinnamon Basil and on and on.... So, combined with his aromatherapy skills, it was with some alacrity that he set about combining lemon with basil and Juniper as well as some bay leaf. With all the buckets lined up, as usual, he eventually arrived at the very recipe we use to this day.

The citrus is so good at bringing out delicate flavours in seafood and fruit dishes, but it is as a salad dressing that it really shines. Those botanical herbal flavours mix well with the Juniper to produce a dressing of such freshness and depth that they really bring a salad to life. So I was delighted a little while ago to receive this beautiful recipe for a mixed salad including my personal favourite, Pine Nuts, and dressed with our Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper from Tessa Stuart.

SPRING INTO AN ENTHUSED WOMERSLEY SALAD

by Tessa Stuart

The Lemon, Basil, Bay and Juniper Vinegar dressing in this recipe gives the salad a wonderfully citrus zing!

INGREDIENTS:

Salad leaves
1 bag of Mixed rocket and leaf salad leaves
¼ of a cucumber, thinly sliced
1 punnet of Pea Shoots
1 carrot peeled and cut into thin strips and thinly shredded.
Sprinkle of Roasted Pine Nuts

Dressing for the salad
10 ml Womersley Lemon, basil, bay & Juniper vinegar dressing
20 ml Rapeseed oil
Sprinkle of Maldon salt


METHOD:
Lightly roast Pine Nuts in the oven until golden brown.
Mix ingredients well together for the salad leaves to get lightly tossed in the dressing.
Sprinkle Pine Nuts over the top and serve

If you would like to buy some of our Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper to give Tessa's recipe a go, check your nearest stockist here, visit our Where to Buy page or give us a call and we will send you some: 01132 865 855.