02 May ricotta toast + pink grapefruit salad

These recipes originally appeared in INSIDER magazine in The Irish Independent on Thursday the 1st of May. 

The week leading up the 1st of May had been gloriously sunny. Hesitant whispers about the return of summer were heard throughout the country after a few consecutive weekends of sun. We thought we would celebrate that for our column on the 1st of May by embracing the sunshine with summer recipes. Only for the 1st of May, the day of publication of our recipes in INSIDER in The Irish Independent, to turn out to be the grossest and soggiest of days this year. So. We’re sorry for cursing the summer.

Our banana and ricotta on toast and our halloumi salads are quick and delicious, designed to be made over busy summer weekends. But they’ll also work if it’s raining outside and might help to cheer up your kitchen.

Banana and Ricotta on Toast for 2

This quick little toasted treat is ready in minutes and is a healthy yet entirely scrumptious way to start the day. If you’re feeling a little less virtuous, melt some top quality chocolate (one of our favourites is Cork’s Clonakilty Chocolate www.clonakiltychocolate.com) to drizzle over the top. And don’t forget, your toast toppings are nothing without the bread they’re served on. We chose the Dublin based Tartine Bakery’s (http://tartine.ie) beautiful hazelnut, walnut and fig sourdough for this quick breakfast.

Ingredients

2 slices of your favourite bread

1 banana

2 tablespoons of ricotta (we’re obsessed with Cork’s Toonsbridge Ricotta)

Handful of chopped hazelnuts

Runny honey

Method

1. Toast your bread to your liking.

2. Slice your banana.

3. Slather your toast generously with ricotta.

4. Evenly divide and layer your slices of banana on top of the toast.

5. Sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts over the top.

6. Finish with a lovely drizzle of runny honey.

Grapefruit and Halloumi Salad for 2

We love a bit of fruit in salad. We’ve featured the more wintery peach and mozarella salad on a video on  www.forkful.tv (which also boasts a particularly impressive cameo from forkful mascot Daffodil the Dog). This is our summer version and we are really into how the bittersweet pink grapefruit gets along with the uber salty halloumi cheese. A pleasure to prepare and eat.

Ingredients

About 150g of halloumi cheese

1 pink grapefruit

2 large handful of your favourite salad leaves

A handful of finely chopped walnuts

For the dressing

Leftover grapefruit juice

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon of runny honey

Salt

Pepper

Method

1. Heat a little drizzle of oil in a large, non-stick frying pan. Slice your halloumi so that they’re about 1cm thick. Fry in the oil for three to five minutes on each side, until wonderfully golden and brown.

2. Meanwhile, slice your pink grapefruit into quarters. Use a sharp knife to carefully remove the juicy fruit from the skin before slicing in half. You should be left with eight segments.

3. You’ll notice there might be a bit of juicy fruit left on the grapefruit skin, which you don’t want to go to waste. Start making your dressing by squeezing any juice that may be leftover from the skin of the grapefruit into a bowl. Add the red wine vinegar, olive oil and honey. Season with a good pinch of salt and pepper before mixing well.

4. Arrange your salad leaves in a bowl before topping with the fried halloumi and the pink grapefruit segments. Add a healthy sprinkling of chopped walnuts before drizzling generously with the tangy dressing and serve immediately – preferably outside in the sunshine.

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