Warm festive salad

Roasted sprouts and sweet potatoes with pancetta tossed with salad leaves in a cranberry vinaigrette. A delicious side dish or tasty main course to feed a festive crowd –  simply leave out the pancetta if you’re catering for vegetarians.

Lots of festive flavours on offer here, but a welcome chance to keep things a bit lighter in the run up to the eating fest of Christmas Day.

Roasting sprouts brings out their sweetness, which makes them wonderful paired with sweet potato, a vegetable I’ve become more than a little addicted to of late. Lidl had some whopping ones in store last week and I was roasting them pretty much daily, tossed in olive oil, sea salt and dried rosemary. Incredible.

So are you all ready for Christmas? I’ve got a very intimidating mountain of presents to wrap, so I think i’ll make a start tonight while i’m braising a batch of red cabbage in the slow cooker.

Warm festive salad

Serves 6

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 35 mins

Ingredients

For the salad
500g sprouts
1 large sweet potato
2 sprigs rosemary, leaves stripped
2 tbsp olive oil
250g bacon lardons
mixed salad leaves
pomegranate seeds

For the dressing
75ml cranberry juice
25ml red wine vinegar
25ml olive oil
25ml maple syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Wash and trim the sprouts and cut in half, peel and chop the sweet potatoes into a 3cm dice then put into a bowl with the rosemary and olive oil and salt and pepper, then toss to coat.

2. Turn out into a roasting dish and then bake for 15 minutes, taking it out to give it a shake, add the pancetta and then return to the oven for a further 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly.

3. Prepare the salad leaves, then scatter into the bottom of a large serving dish, then add the  roasted vegetables.

4. And finally make the dressing by combining the ingredients in a jam jar with some salt and pepper. Screw on the lid and shake to combine, check the balance of flavours and adjust according to taste.

5. Drizzle a little through the salad, and then leave the rest on the side for people to add more if they want. Scatter the salad with pomegranate seeds and serve.