This Pea, Broad Bean and Vegan Goats Cheese Salad is a refreshing summer dish perfect for a light lunch or to be served at a BBQ. Get the recipe below.

Summer salads

When the weather is hot you just don't want to be slaving over a hot stove. Forget soups and stews, salads are what we want.

Salads can be incredibly boring - limp lettuce, a cherry tomato or two - but they don't have to be. I hate lettuce with a passion and so I'm forever looking for salad recipes that excite me without being predominantly made up of leaves.

This recipe uses broad beans and peas as the base with a light dressing of just extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and zest. A little salt and pepper is added for seasoning too.

The two main flavours are the dill and vegan goats cheese. You might be thinking that peas and broad beans are usually paired with feta and mint. And you'd be right. There are hundreds of recipes out there that combine these two veggies with that particular herb and type of cheese.

But, I think that there is no reason why we can't sometimes look for slightly more unusual flavour combinations to create something new and exciting. That's why I've swapped mint for dill and feta for goats cheese in this Pea, Broad Bean and Vegan Goats Cheese Salad.

Pea, Broad Bean and Vegan Goats Cheese Salad

Where can I find vegan goats cheese?

A rather important component of this dish is the Vegan Goats Cheese. There are some great goats cheese alternatives on the market which are available both online and in supermarkets.

For this recipe I used Palace Culture's Plant Based Organic Mouldy Goaty Cheese Alternative. This is now stocked in Waitrose so you don't have to order it especially, you can just pick it up with your other groceries.

I also really like 'Goat-ee' from 'Strictly Roots Vegan' and 'G.O.A.T' from 'I am Nut OK'. You can buy both of these brands at La Fauxmagerie which has an online store as well as a shop front in Camden.

Of course if you've stumbled across this recipe and you're not vegan then feel free to use regular goats cheese!

Can I use frozen peas and broad beans?

Yes! I almost always use frozen peas and broad beans. They are two fantastic ingredients to have in your freezer.

All you need to do is cook them according to their packet's instructions and then plunge them into cold water to cool them down quickly, stopping them from overcooking.

If you want to go the extra mile with the broad beans you could remove them from their shells but I think they're absolutely fine as they come.

Serve with...

I think this is the perfect salad to make for a BBQ. It goes well with so many different dishes.

For my fellow vegans it's great with my peppercorn tofu steaks.

For those of you who aren't vegan, the dill goes really well with fish, chicken and pork.

The recipe