This Greek and Persian-inspired salad is a real mashup, but the flavours pair perfectly.

The star of the show is definitely the lamb, and we all know how beautiful char-grilled lamb can be but also how terrible it can be when it's overcooked. Use your Thermapen to carefully take the meat up to temperature before removing it from the heat early to account for carryover cooking to ensure perfectly pink lamb. 

This pork salad recipe is part of Mike Tomkins’ Summer Salad series. Check out the series to get more inspiration for your summer meals.

Ingredients

Serves 2/3

For the lamb:

• Rack of lamb or lamb loin chops
• 1 tbsp sumac
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 2 garlic cloves
• Salt & pepper

For the salad:

• 100g rocket
• 200g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 cucumber, deseeded and cubed
• 80g black olives, halved
• 200g feta
• 1 large handful of mint leaves
• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 1 tbsp sumac
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 20ml extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Method

• Massage all of the marinade ingredients into your lamb. If you've got loin chops like me, there is often a split down to the eyes of the meat, allowing you to really work the marinade into all of the meat. Score the fat cap of the lamb.
• Allow the meat to rest for at least an hour before placing it fat-side down into a hot cast iron pan. You want to really caramelise and cook the fat cap down at a relatively low temperature, around 160-180 °C. If cooking directly on a grill, be careful of fatty flare-ups from the fat rendering, as this will quickly ruin your lamb.

• When your Thermapen reads 30 °C, remove it from the BBQ and crank the heat up. Slice into individual chops and sear until the internal temp reaches 45 °C before resting. I leave the lamb to rest in the cast iron pan until it reaches 55-60 °C for perfectly pink medium rare lamb.
• Whilst the meat is resting, we're going to make our salad. Combine the sliced onion with the sumac, lemon juice and a large pinch of salt. Allow it to sit for at least 20 minutes.
• Once the onion is ready, combine all of your salad ingredients and dress with lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Serve with the lamb chops.

Mike Tomkins

Masterchef 2021 Runner Up

@thenotecook

"Thermapen is one of those kitchen tools I can't live without - it's something I use every single day from making sauces, to bbq cooking, to private dining and events, it comes with me everywhere! A Thermapen will improve you as a chef and a cook by taking the guess work out of complex cooking."