Blog > Recipes

Warm lamb, chickpea and pumpkin salad with goat's cheese

Warm lamb, chickpea and pumpkin salad with goat's cheese

This is a great main course warm salad very suitable for dinner any season of the year or for an amazing weekend lunch. It is very tasty and more than "filling". All the flavours in this dish work really well together and although there are a few steps with the cooking, all are simple and don't take much time...with the slight exception of roasting the pumpkin.

The lamb fillet or backstrap are both very lean and you don't actually need too much with all the other ingredients in this dish

 

Ingredients

 

1 tablespoon olive oil

600 gms approx lamb fillet or backstrap -you might have to get these cuts from your friendly butcher. You could also use lamb fillet

2 red capsicum – cut into long strips. I like the twin packs of "King Sweeties" that you can get from good fruit/ veg stores. Alternatively, two standard capsicums will certainly do the job

Goat cheese – approx. 100 gms/small packet. Alternatively use feta

2 tins chickpeas

Quarter pumpkin – you can generally buy a quarter pumpkin cheaply at your supermarket

Pinenuts – one small packet

Smoked paprika

Lemon juice

Baby spinach – one supermarket packet

If you are cooking for two, two pieces of backstrap will be enough and one tin of chick peas

 

Cooking instructions

 

  1. Put the pumpkin in the microwave for 1-2 minutes to soften it up a bit. Then cut into either chunks (about4 com squares) or slices (I prefer slices). Put in baking pan, add salt and cracked pepper and drizzle some olive oil and bake in over on 240 degrees for approx. 30 minutes
  2. Using a fry pan, on low-medium heat, toast the pinenuts, constantly turning and making sure they don’t burn! This will only take a minute or so. Remove from pan
  3. Rub the lamb with a bit of olive oil season with salt and pepper.
  4. With the same fry pan, on medium-high heat, cook the backstrap for 3 mins on one side, then turn over and cook the other side for another 3 minutes. If using fillet, it will only take just over two minutes per side. Remove the lamb, put on a plate, cover with foil and put in oven on low heat to rest
  5. Wipe out the fry pan and add the extra Tbsp of olive oil, then add the chickpeas and cook quickly on a high heat, squeezing some lemon juice while cooking and a sprinkling of smoked paprika. Remove from pan
  6. Without “cleaning” the pan, increase heat to high and cook the capsicum (adding a little bit more smoked paprika) for a couple of minutes until slightly charred. Add to chickpeas
  7. Remove lamb from oven and cut into thinnish slices – it should be slightly pink
  8. Assemble the salad - start with the pumpkin, chickpeas/capsicum and then the lamb. Add the spinach leaves last so they don’t wilt. Gently mix through all the ingredients. Finally break up the goat cheese, add and top the salad with the pinenuts

 

Serves 4