We ate fresh goat’s cheese mousse soft, with nothing but a trickle from the olive oil bottle, and then a spoonful of fresh peas steaming hot, and a few wayward tendrils of peppery pea shoots. It was the first of this year’s outdoor lunches.
When the first few sunny days of spring came, we picked up the cushions, put them on the barely dry bench and ate in the garden. And so it has been all spring, meal after meal taken at the garden table instead of indoors: a pan of courgettes left to soften and brown lightly in olive oil, lemon and handfuls of torn basil. A plate of prawns cooked in their oh-so-suckable shells with butter and sweet, young garlic. Broad beans amid a nest of curly pea shoots and twice as much parsley as you’d expect. Skinny carrots under a mound of sweet white sheep’s cheese flecked with mint and black pepper. Simple stuff, and all the better for being eaten in the air.
There has been something of a theme to much of my eating this spring, unplanned, but present nevertheless. Young ingredients, mostly fruit and vegetables served with the more piquant of dairy produce. Sheep’s yogurt, the salty white cheeses – salted ricotta and feta – and double cream. That last one reserved for eating in softly beaten mounds with sharp rhubarb jellies or for folding into passion-fruit fools. The cheeses are particularly good with eagerly awaited young vegetables, the broad beans and cucumber, asparagus and radishes, illuminating those first, elusive early flavours. A handful of crumbled feta in a salad of young broad beans, radishes and the canary-yellow heart-leaves of a lettuce started a Sunday roast chicken lunch in the garden for us only a week or two ago.
There is an ease to early summer cooking that comes from a starting point of having the finest of the season’s ingredients to hand. Tiny strawberries, broad beans, pea-shoots and young rhubarb. You couldn’t go wrong. The less you do to these infant fruit and vegetables the better. Broad beans can be tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and basil and scattered over mozzarella; the strawberries could spend an hour in a co*cktail of elderflower and fresh, lemony ginger; the rhubarb baked with orange till its juices are copious enough to be turned into a clear, barely set jelly. Serve that last one with whipped cream into which you have beaten a few drops of rosewater and given a bite of texture with chopped pistachios.
Salted ricotta is becoming something of a go-to ingredient in my kitchen, in some cases replacing parmesan. It is fresher tasting and altogether less rich while packing a punch. Like an intense feta, this firm form of ewe’s milk cheese is refreshingly milky and salty. It is most easily tracked down at Italian grocers, and will keep for several weeks in the fridge. I grate salted ricotta over courgettes that I have fried in olive oil, steamed asparagus or the first tiny tomatoes, the orange-skinned cherry variety – indulge in them before the big boys of summer come along.
Courgettes, prawns and lemon
Shell-on prawns with butter and garlic, courgettes tossed with torn basil and lemon. Two simple pairings happy to share a plate. You could shell the prawns and toss them in the pan with the courgettes, but that would probably mean forgoing sucking their garlicky-buttery shells. An activity I regard as one of the great pleasures of early summer eating.
Serves 2
courgettes 500g
olive oil 4 tbsp
butter 30g
garlic 2 cloves, thinly sliced
raw prawns 200g (about 16), shell on
basil 15g
lemon juice of 1
Slice the courgettes in half lengthways, then cut each half into thin slices. Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan over a moderate heat. Put the courgettes into the hot oil, letting them cook for a few minutes until soft and translucent.
In another pan melt the butter. When it foams, add the garlic and let it cook for two or three minutes till fragrant then lower in the prawns. When the prawns are pink on the underside, turn them and cook the other side. Season with black pepper, coarsely ground.
Pick the leaves from the basil and toss them with the courgettes, then squeeze in the lemon juice. Turn the courgettes a few times in the oil, until the basil leaves have started to wilt, then season with a little salt and serve alongside the hot prawns.
Broad beans, pea shoots and salted ricotta
Even a couple of tablespoons of salted ricotta grated over a dish of warm vegetables can bring things to life.
Serves 2
broad beans 500g
small tomatoes 150g
parsley a few sprigs
pea shoots 25g
olive oil for dressing
salted ricotta 4 tbsp
Remove the beans from their pods. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, salt it lightly then add the beans and let them cook for 4 or 5 minutes.
Drain the beans and plunge them into iced water. Pop the larger beans from their skins, but leave the smaller beans be.
Slice each tomato into four then put them in a bowl. Remove the leaves from the parsley and chop enough for 2 heaped tablespoons. Add the parsley to the bowl, together with the drained, cooled and skinned broad beans.
Wash the pea shoots, then toss them with the tomatoes and beans. Dress with a little olive oil, gently turning the ingredients over till finely coated. Divide between plates then grate over the salted ricotta and serve.
Carrots, honey vinegar and minted feta
If the sweetness of young carrots is not to cloy, they need a seasoning that is sharp and bright. Step up honey and vinegar, which together form a dressing that instantly makes them sing. The feta, clean, salty and piquant, turns what can be a one-note vegetable into something worth eating.
For 2 as a side dish
spring carrots 250g
white wine vinegar 25ml
liquid honey 2 tbsp
feta 200g
yogurt 100g
mint leaves 15
Wipe the carrots, removing their stalks and leaves, then cook them for seven or eight minutes in deep, lightly salted boiling water. If the carrots are very slim, check them after five.
Mix the vinegar and honey together in a shallow dish large enough to take the carrots. Remove the carrots from the water and drain briefly, then cut each carrot in half lengthways. That way the dressing will permeate the flesh more effectively. Place the carrots in the honey and vinegar dressing and set aside for 30 minutes.
Shortly before serving, crumble the feta into small pieces then fold into the yogurt. Finely chop the mint leaves and stir into the creamed feta.
Serve the marinated carrots with the minted feta.
Strawberries, elderflower, mint and ginger
Cream tends to smother a strawberry. I find the fruit’s flavour is best illuminated by a little lemon juice or chopped mint, or, as I discovered recently, ginger. The warm, slightly spicy notes of the fresh, lemony ginger will perk up even the flattest tasting strawberry.
Serves 2
elderflower cordial 75ml
ginger 8-10g, peeled and grated
mint leaves 15
strawberries 200g
Pour the elderflower cordial into a mixing bowl, then peel the ginger and grate it finely into the cordial. Finely chop the mint leaves and add them to the bowl.
Cut each strawberry in half, toss them with the dressing, then leave them in the mint and ginger marinade for 30 minutes in the fridge. Any longer and the strawberries risk becoming too soft.
Divide the berries and their chilled marinade between two bowls and serve.
Rhubarb jellies with rosewater cream and pistachios
Once I have had my fill of crumble, I look for other ways to use rhubarb, ways to celebrate its delicate sour notes. Sweetened with orange juice and a little sugar, rhubarb cooks down to give a glorious ruby-pink juice, enough to set as a jelly.
Enough for 4
rhubarb 500g
oranges 2
water 300ml
caster sugar 70g
gelatine 6 leaves
double cream 250ml
rosewater 1 tsp (to taste)
pistachios 2 tbsp, shredded or chopped
Trim the rhubarb, and cut into short lengths. Nothing longer than you can get on a dessert spoon. Put the rhubarb into a stainless steel saucepan then halve the oranges and squeeze their juice over the rhubarb.
Pour the water into the pan, sprinkle with the sugar then bring to the boil. Lower the heat and leave the rhubarb to simmer until the stalks are soft and starting to collapse – about 10 minutes.
Soak the leaves of gelatine in a bowl of cold, but not icy water.
Remove the rhubarb from the pan with a draining spoon, leaving behind the juice. Measure 500ml of juice into a jug. When the gelatine has softened to a jelly-like texture, lift it out and stir into the warm rhubarb and orange juice in the jug. Divide the rhubarb between four deep dishes, then pour the juice over. Transfer to a fridge to set. It should take about 4 hours. (Chilled thoroughly, any leftover rhubarb juice makes a refreshing drink.)
When the jelly has set, pour the cream into a cold mixing bowl and add the rosewater, then whip until the cream will just hold a soft shape. It shouldn’t be stiff. Spoon the rosewater cream onto the rhubarb then scatter with the pistachios.
