Roast fennel, tomato & spelt salad with green olives

This is an easy one tray salad that is almost ready straight from the oven! All you need to do is roast the veggies in one big tray, mix in the spelt and drizzle with olive oil and lemon! It really is as simple as that - I love this salad served warm and topped with crumbled feta, but it works equally well as part of a salad spread or a side to fish, chicken or some fresh bread and butter would be lovely too.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 200g pearled spelt

• 2 fennel, sliced

• 350g baby plum tomatoes

• 1 large garlic clove

• A small handful of green or black olives, ripped in half or thirds if large

• Juice of ½ lemon

• 1/2 tsp sea salt

• Handful of chopped parsley leaves

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180ºc.

• Cook spelt as per instructions, usually simmer for 20 minutes

• Spread the fennel and tomatoes out on a large baking tray and drizzle with olive oil ad a sprinkle of sea salt, roast for 15 minutes, turn and toss in the olives. Put back in the oven for 10 minutes.

• Once the vegetables are cooked, immediately deglaze the tray with approx 80ml of water and then gently stir in the spelt, plus 1-2 tbsp olive oil, lemon juice, salt and a good grind of black pepper.

• Top with fresh parsley to serve.

Tip

• Use the best quality olives as you can afford. I bought some amazing large green olives from Sous Chef linked here, they had a slight chilli heat which worked really well. Cheaper olives can always be improved by soaking for 5-10 minutes in water to make them less salty. Even rinsing will help if you done hace time to soak.