Rocket salad with baguette toasts

OK, so I couldn’t get by on black coffee and a rusk. I made myself a salad for supper. A very simple one, because I had very little time today. Basically, I’ve been sitting at the computer all day and it’s driving me up the wall. I felt tired and thought it was hunger. Probably wasn’t, though, because I’m still sitting here and still don’t feel too good. And I’ve already eaten the salad. Enough rambling. Here’s what I threw together.

At a glance:

Prep time: 10 minutes

Serves: 1

How many calories: I really, really hope it’s not many

Ingredients for what I hope is a light supper salad:

• Rocket (half a bag, going by the size they sell at Lidl)
• 6 cherry tomatoes 
• 6 sun-dried tomatoes (packed in oil)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• half a fresh cucumber
• 3 slices of lean ham
• 4 rounds of baguette 
• dried herbes de Provence
• hot paprika
• ground black pepper
• a pinch of salt
• olive oil

Method (mostly tossing things together):

Just so nobody calls this a raw vegetable salad: some of the ingredients have actually seen some heat 🙂 That’s why it takes a whole 10 minutes to make. I preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius, wash the rocket and cherry tomatoes and pat them dry with kitchen paper. I go out for a smoke.

When I get back, I lay three slices of ham flat on some foil. I slice the baguette and put the rounds in a little basket I’ve shaped from another piece of foil (I wrote a separate post about these baguette toasts). I give two garlic cloves a whack with my fist and chop them finely. I scatter one of the chopped cloves over the baguette. I sprinkle the rounds with herbes de Provence and hot paprika, drizzle them with olive oil and put them in the oven with the ham alongside.

I put the dried rocket in a bowl and add the cherry tomatoes, halved, and the sun-dried tomatoes, blotted with kitchen paper to remove the oil and cut into strips. I peel the cucumber, chop it roughly and add it too. I season everything to taste with pepper, salt and herbes de Provence (I like mine hot and punchy, so do what you like). In goes the other chopped clove of garlic. I add half a tablespoon of olive oil and toss thoroughly.

The ham should have dried out by now, so I take it out and chop it into little pieces. I add it to the salad and toss again. Meanwhile the baguette toasts are just about done. I pile the salad onto a plate and arrange the toasts on top. Tastes pretty decent. Probably healthy, too. Enjoy!