Greek Style Warm Risoni Salad
Inspired by Greek spanakopita, this salad has all the flavour without the extra buttery flakey pastry calories. There is a heavy helping of herbs, brightened up with the juice and zest of a lemon, a hit of garlic and then rounded out with the salty bursts of feta and briney pops of marinated olive.
For extra credit, I’ve been serving this as a light but hearty weekend lunch topped with my oven baked meatballs. I can prep the whole salad in pretty much the time it takes for the meatballs to cook so these two recipes compliment each other well.
If you are looking for more Salad & Side Dish Inspiration, please check out my other recipes.
Greek Style Warm Risoni Salad
Bring a medium sized saucepan of water to the boil and cook the Risoni according to packet directions. You'll want this to be warm as you add it to the rest of the salad, so best not to prepare too far in advance.
Roughly chop the Parsley, Dill and Lemon Zest and add to a large plastic food storage container. (I use a 4L one with a sealed lid - this makes it easy to shake up and combine the salad later)
Crumble the feta cheese into small pieces and add this to the zest and herbs.
Remove the white stems from your silverbeet and rinse the remaining dark green leaves. Pat dry with a paper towel and scrunch the leaves up into a roll. Slice the scrunched up silver-beet leaves into fine shreds and add to the container with the herbs, zest and feta.
Make your dressing with the Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, Garlic (minced finely) and season with salt & pepper. I usually mix this all up in a shaker container, but you can also whisk together in a small bowl.
Drain the cooked Risoni and add to the container, top with dressing and shake the sealed container to combine the salad and dressing.
Serve in a salad bowl topped with the drained marinated olives.
Ingredients
Directions
Bring a medium sized saucepan of water to the boil and cook the Risoni according to packet directions. You'll want this to be warm as you add it to the rest of the salad, so best not to prepare too far in advance.
Roughly chop the Parsley, Dill and Lemon Zest and add to a large plastic food storage container. (I use a 4L one with a sealed lid - this makes it easy to shake up and combine the salad later)
Crumble the feta cheese into small pieces and add this to the zest and herbs.
Remove the white stems from your silverbeet and rinse the remaining dark green leaves. Pat dry with a paper towel and scrunch the leaves up into a roll. Slice the scrunched up silver-beet leaves into fine shreds and add to the container with the herbs, zest and feta.
Make your dressing with the Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, Garlic (minced finely) and season with salt & pepper. I usually mix this all up in a shaker container, but you can also whisk together in a small bowl.
Drain the cooked Risoni and add to the container, top with dressing and shake the sealed container to combine the salad and dressing.
Serve in a salad bowl topped with the drained marinated olives.
Notes
This leafy green is also known as Swiss-Chard. If you aren’t able to source this, you can replace with roughly 300g Baby Spinach, English Spinach or Kale.
This short rice-shaped pasta is also found under the name Orzo or Kritharaki. You can substitute with any other short pasta shape such as spirals or bow ties.
Rather than replacing the feta with a vegan based cheese alternative you would probably be better off removing the feta entirely and replacing with 30g toasted pine nuts as well as adding a little extra salt to the dressing.
Key Ingredients
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