Green Pea & Feta Salad Recipe

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We’re back to the joys of seasonal eating again with great seasonal recipes. A spring pea and feta salad recipe – with a few extras.

This is going to be a salad which can either be a great side dish or a perfect light lunch.

At the moment, the stalls of the local markets are brimming with spring greens.

Crisp leafy greens and fresh herbs.

The Peas

And recently, we’ve been unable to resist buying up fresh peas (araka bezelye) on the Çalış Sunday Market.

Just like summer, when I love to pod beans for our barbunya pilaki recipe, podding peas is one of my favourite pastimes.

When it comes to these lovely spring sweet peas, however, it sometimes becomes a case of one-for-me-one-for-the-bowl!

A satisfying pop on the opening of the pod. And then that lovely bit of crunch – your share of the peas in the pod.

The rest go into a bowl, ready for your green pea salad.

Once all of your peas are podded, that lovely vibrant green just shouts out springtime colour and texture.

And for us, they’re begging to be a star ingredient in a salad recipe.

When the green peas are young, they’re fine to eat raw.

But, for our pea and feta salad, we really want to bring out the sweetness of the peas.

And we want a more emerald colour, too!

To do this, we’re going to boil the peas on a medium high heat for no more than 5 minutes so that they’re al dente.

After 5 minutes, to stop them cooking any further we drain them in a colander and then plunge the peas into cold water.

You can use ice water if you like but we find cold water does the trick.

If you want to add snow peas or sugar snap peas, these are also in season at the moment, too.

And if you can’t get fresh green peas of any description, good quality frozen peas will work, too.

Feta Cheese? Or Not?

And what more perfect springtime partner to your fresh peas than some tangy, salty feta cheese?

That’s if you can’t get the Turkish equivalent – beyaz peynir (white cheese).

In our case, we of course use Turkish white cheese. A low fat version.

Not for any dietary reasons.

Just for the simple fact that we prefer the firmer texture of the low fat version of beyaz peynir when we’re making salads.

It more resembles the texture of feta cheese that many of us are familiar with.

In Turkish cuisine, you’re more likely to see beyaz peynir as part of the cheese selection on your Turkish breakfast but it is sometimes used in salads, too.

Akdeniz salatası, melon salad and chickpea salad love a few chunks of white cheese.

So our pea salad can have the same treatment.

And Everything Else

Obviously, we’re not just going to be enjoying a bowl of garden peas and feta cheese – nice enough as that would be.

We want lots of extra texture and spring flavours.

• Olive oil: Olive oil is far from cheap these days. But a good salad deserves as good an olive oil as you can afford.
• Fresh lemon juice: This is going to be mixed with your olive oil as part of your salad dressing.
• Pomegranate molasses: Well, these days, we are strongly influenced by the flavours and ingredients of Turkish cuisine. We can’t imagine this salad dressing without nar ekşisi – pomegranate molasses.
• Local honey: Local honey adds a bit of sweetness to our dressing. And, along with the local nar ekşisi, keeping our salad ingredients firmly of the Fethiye origin.
• Fresh herbs: It’s spring and fresh mint is everywhere! It’s no accident that seasonal ingredients compliment each other so a good handful of fresh mint leaves is going into our pea and feta salad. As is our favourite of fresh herbs; coriander!
• Little gem lettuce: A small variety of Romaine lettuce, this has a mild sweet flavour. No bitterness.
• Grated carrot: We’ve added a bit of grated carrot to our pea and feta salad just for an extra bit of crunch and colour contrast.
• Pickled beetroot: Again, influenced by all foods Turkish, we want a bit of turşu (Turkish pickled vegetables) in our salad but nothing too overpowering. This is all about fresh flavours. Beetroot gives us more colour contrast and a complementary flavour that doesn’t take over.
• Cashew nuts: Because we love nuts in a salad. Walnuts will work really well, too.

All of our ingredients go together in a large bowl to make a great salad.

Springtime Pea & Feta Salad Recipe

Let’s make pea and feta salad – a perfect side dish or light lunch.

We can’t say this is a traditional Turkish recipe but it certainly makes use of all the great local ingredients that are around at the moment.

So, in that sense, it most definitely is Turkish.

We love pea and feta salad with lamb – lamb chops (pirzola), lamb steaks (külbastı) or lamb shish (kuzu şiş).

Afiyet olsun!

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