Roast red onion and garlic salad with Brazil parsley pesto and feta

The little onions and garlic are roasted until they are caramelised which brings out their natural sweetness, team this with a few roasted olives, the nutty, oily pesto and a sprinkle of feta and you have a delicious salad which is great on its own or as a side dish.Ingredients.

50 gms of feta, any sort.
400gms of red onions, if you can get little ones that is better.
1/2 a lemon.
30ml of apple cider vinegar.
1/2 cup of olives, I use kalamata.
a large bunch of parsley.
60ml of good olive oil. Plus another slug for the roasting.
15 cloves of garlic.
1/3 cup of Brazil nuts.
a bunch of thyme.

Peel and cut the onions in half, if you have large onions cut into quarters but try and retain a bit of the root part so they don’t fall apart. I don’t peel the garlic for this dish, just separate the cloves and remove any loose paper skin. Reserve one small clove of garlic for the pesto. Add the garlic, the thyme, the onions and a good extra slug of olive oil to a roasting tray.

Cover tightly with foil and roast at 180C fan for 45 minutes. Then remove the foil and scatter in the olives turn the oven up to 200C fan bake and roast for a further 15 minutes.It should look like this when done, the onions and garlic caramelised and the olives a bit shrivelled.

While the onions are roasting prepare the pesto. Remove the stems from the parsley and juice the half lemon and peel the reserved clove of garlic. Into a small or large processor put the parsley, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, garlic, Brazil nuts and olive oil.

Whizz until finely chopped. It will be a bit thick so add a couple of tablespoons of water to thin it down a bit and whizz again. Then add salt to taste, it will need about 1/4 teaspoon.Time to plate up, start with the roasted items, be sure to add in the crunchy thyme.

Next spoon over the pesto, try and fill the gaps with the bright green oily unctiousness. I like to scatter over a bit of extra parsley.Some sliced radish is nice for colour and heat but not necessary. Lastly crumble over the feta. We had this salad with fried courgettes and roast beetroot and sprouted sunflower seeds.