Cooking in: Raid the flower bed as well as the larder for colour and flavour for your summer salads
Salads are a feast for the eyes as much as anything else. One of the most memorable dishes I ate last year was at the Basque restaurant Mugaritz, outside San Sebastián. The waiter poured a cheese broth - a vegetable stock infused with Gruyère - over a plate of salad. Each leaf had been carefully arranged with tweezers - I kid you not - and on the edge of the plate was a pod we were told to eat last. We were never told what it was, but it was akin to a pepper sorbet, all fizz and attitude.
We tend to be wimpish about our salads. There can be so much more to them than lettuce. Herbs, for a start. Try basil and tarragon, chervil and chives, or a mixture of all of them. They add bite and attitude.
Edible flowers can good, too. Marigolds appeared in a beetroot salad I was eating the other day, the yellow flowers stark against the beetroot's redness. Last summer, picnicking in a friend's garden, we plucked nasturtiums - leaves and flowers - and fennel fronds to add to a salad laced with a garlicky yogurt dressing.
Now that sprouts are easier to find - Superquinn stocks garlic, alfalfa and lentil sprouts, for example - use them to jazz up your salads. The pale stems and dark black shoots of garlic sprouts sit well against a bowl of green leaves. They add punch and crunch, as do nuts and seeds. Use a sparing hand, though. Spices, briefly toasted in a hot dry frying pan, are a good salad addition. Cumin and mustard seeds, fennel seeds and poppy seeds all make for a change in texture, coupled with flavour.
A warm salad can be delicious. Warm bacon is a good choice, as is some briefly-fried chicken or chorizo. The pan juices, deglazed and added to a dressing, make all the difference.
A poached egg is a good topping. If you are preparing a salad for big numbers, make them in advance and keep them in the fridge. A quick immersion in boiling water before serving will bring them back to life.
Recipes serve 4
GRILLED CHICKEN, GOAT'S CHEESE, PEA AND ASPARAGUS SALAD WITH PINE-NUT DRESSING
4 chicken breasts
olive oil
bunch of basil leaves
large bunch mint, roughly chopped
4 handfuls mixed lettuce leaves
100g frozen peas
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 4cm pieces
2 tbsp crumbled goat's cheese
1 tbsp pine nuts
½ cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely diced
1 lemon, trimmed and quartered
Heat a cast-iron griddle pan. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. Grill for three minutes on each side on the griddle, then transfer to an oven preheated to 180 degrees/gas four and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until cooked. Let them rest for five minutes.
Thinly slice the chicken and leave it to cool. Add to the basil and mint and toss with the salad leaves. Cook the peas and asparagus in boiling water until just done. Drain and rinse under cold water. Toss the cooked vegetables with the chicken and salad leaves. Scatter the goat's cheese over the top.
Heat the pine nuts in a hot dry pan over a moderate heat until just coloured. (They burn easily.) Allow them to cool, then add to the cucumber. Season with salt and pepper and add three tablespoons of olive oil. Toss into the rest of the salad and serve with the lemon.
MASHED CANNELLINI BEANS, WATERCRESS AND TOMATO SALAD
1 400g tin cannellini beans, rinsed
1 garlic clove, peeled, finely chopped and mashed with a little salt
2 scallions, peeled and finely chopped
olive oil
1 tbsp picked thyme
4 tomatoes, seeded, cored and quartered
4 handfuls watercress
1 lemon, trimmed and quartered
In a blender, combine the beans with the garlic, spring onions and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Blitz, drizzling in enough olive oil to form a thick paste. Stir in the thyme and set aside.
Combine the tomatoes and watercress, and season with salt and pepper. Dress with four tablespoons of olive oil and divide on to four plates. Spoon the cannellini puree on the side and drizzle with more olive oil. Serve with a lemon quarter each and an extra grinding of black pepper.
WARM SALAD OF FRENCH BEANS, BLACK OLIVES, POTATOES AND POACHED EGG
2 waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into ½cm slices
400g French beans, topped and tailed
olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
4 scallions, trimmed and finely sliced
100g pitted black olives, roughly chopped
4 eggs
Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until just tender. Remove from the heat and keep warm. Blanch the beans in the same water, remove and add to the potatoes. Whisk four tablespoons of olive oil and the teaspoon of balsamic vinegar into the teaspoon of mustard.
Season the bean and potato mixture with salt and pepper and gently toss with the mustard vinaigrette. Add the spring onions and the black olives and spoon on to four plates.
Poach the eggs for three minutes, or until cooked, in a saucepan of salted boiling water. (It helps in the poaching of the eggs if you stir the water around before adding the eggs. With a bit of luck the white will wrap itself round the yolk to form a sphere. The poaching can be done in advance. Transfer the cooked eggs to iced water to cool and store in the fridge until needed, when you can drop them in boiling water for a minute to warm through.)
Drain on kitchen paper and place on top of the bean and potato mixture. Serve.