Quinoa & cucumber salad with watermelon vinaigrette

Ingredients Quinoa, watermelon, mint, red wine vinegar, rapeseed oil, cucumber

Preparation: 15 minutes

This salad is magnificent in its simplicity, but utterly delicious. Watermelon vinaigrette represents everything that is wonderful about summer to me - fresh, sweet and tangy. It's quick to prepare and really brings quinoa to life.

1) Soak the quinoa for 5 minutes and rinse well in a sieve. Depending on where you buy it, it naturally has an acrid coating called saponin which you don't want flavouring your food!

2) Cover the quinoa in salted water and bring to the boil for about 15 minutes, stir continually as it soaks up the water and fluffs up, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool

3) Juice the watermelon if you have a press juicer, or crush it in a jug with a pestle and pass through a sieve to release a smooth juice. Mix about 100ml watermelon juice to a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and a tablespoon of rapeseed oil. Add chopped mine and stir through the quinoa. 
Add chunks of cucumber and serve!

Feta and watermelon salad

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Ingredients Watermelon, feta, red onion, lime juice

1) Slice the watermelon and feta into chunks and mix by hand.

2) The simplicity of this salad is what makes it so toothsome, but if you wish you can top it with some red onion soaked in lime juice which will bring out the colour but strip out the stench and rank flavour of raw onion. (as you can tell, I loathe onions!)