Strawberry Pecorino salad

Another great little salad! Again, a recipe I found at Debbie's blog - she's probably the blogger whose recipes I try out most often! This one charmed me at once - strawberries are everywhere now, and I'm always looking for fun new things to use them in. A pairing with cheese - gimme! And especially since pecorino is one of my latest new food finds. So good - more flavorful than parmesan, but less intense. Different. Salty. Good. I also managed to find sugar snaps for this salad, and I'm glad I did (even though they were criminally expensive!) - their little bursts of sugary goodness was perfect.

So - very simple really - take about 250 g of strawberries, halve them or quarter them depending on size, mix with roughly diced cucumber, freshly blanched (1 minute in boiling water, plunge in ice water, drain, serve) sugar snap peas (about 250 g), as much pecorino as you want, and I tossed in a bunch of toasted pine nuts, too. And a little bit of mint - I have it in my "herb garden" (grand name for a little flowerbed outside my balcony, but still) and it went very well with the other flavors.

And toss with a good vinaigrette. I use about 2 tbsp of white balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp of olive oil, dash of dijon mustard (I picked up one that's flavored with shallots - very good!), a dash of honey, salt and pepper.