Haloumi, avocado and lemon salad

Quite a few salads have been made in my kitchen lately.

Perhaps I am trying to encourage the weather to turn more 'summer-like' as we've had a lot of rain, wind and generally depressing 'Autumn-like' conditions for the past month.

This Haloumi salad is packed with lots of texture and strongly-flavoured ingredients. Instead of just squeezing some lemon juice over the top, I peeled the lemon, removed the seeds, sliced finely and then added this as an ingredient to the salad. If you think this may be too strong for you, just juice the lemon instead of using the flesh. And because the lemon flesh is in the salad, I only dressed this salad with olive oil and some salt and pepper. That's it.

Again, there's lots of texture here; the chewy and crunchy Haloumi, the squishy avocado, the tart lemon flesh and the fragrant fresh mint. I really liked this combination. And it is so 'summery' and pretty to look at too.

Serve as a side dish to roast chicken or seafood.

What you'll need

Serves 4

1 large ripe avocado, peeled, de-seeded and sliced into large cubes
1 lemon, skin and pith (the white part) and seeds removed, sliced into small pieces
2 x 200g packets Haloumi cheese
Handful fresh mint, finely sliced

Olive oil
Salt and pepper

What to do

Grill the Haloumi. Heat a pan over medium heat. Add a teaspoon of olive oil to the pan, swirl the oil to coat the pan. Thickly slice the Haloumi (50mm - 100mm thick), place in the pan and grill on each side until browned. Set aside and keep warm. Cook in batches if all the Haloumi doesn't fit in the pan all at once.

On a serving plate, layer the salad ingredients, finishing with the mint on top. Drizzle over a little olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.