This is a good example of how a tasty salad really doesn't need fancy dressing, just a dab of olive oil and lemon juice to enhance the flavour – and a chunk of crusty bread to soak up the liquid and to complement the flavours.

A simple, tasty salad is always a good scene-setter to a pleasant meal but we enjoy it so much that we often have it as a light main course with a warm garlic and herb loaf.

As always you can vary the ingredients to you own taste (we never serve green pepper, for example) and we always add a couple of baby tomatoes, and small button mushrooms because it enhances the flavour of the olives and the feta cheese.

Instead of feta cheese you can use the cheese of your choice.

To serve four portions of this special mixed salad you need:

Ingredients

2 yellow peppers, sliced into strips

2 red peppers, cut into chunky pieces

1 red onion, coarsely chopped

4 spring onions, coarsely chopped

12 black olives

12 green olives

12 baby tomatoes, halved

½ cup fresh mint, coarsely chopped

250g cubed feta cheese

½ cup olive oil

Juice of one lemon

1 cup of buttons mushrooms, halved

Method

Make the dressing first by mixing the lemon juice and olive oil and adding the chopped mint.

Season lightly with salt and black pepper then set aside.

Toss all the other ingredients together with the dressing, but not the tomatoes.

Just before serving add the tomatoes.

And remember to take the warm bread out of the oven….