Whether it’s tiny strawberries, broad beans or young rhubarb, when it comes to the new season’s ingredients, the less you do the better
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.
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