I don’t know about you, but I’m loving this glorious sunshine and – finally – the chance to enjoy some suitably summery salads, and the chance to make use of my veg patch crops, like this magnificent and intensely lemony red-veined sorrel.
I grow a number of varieties of salad greens, as well as some ‘usual’ summer vegetables (such as courgettes), as well as innumerable herbs. A few days ago, I put a few of these all on a plate, together with a hard-boiled egg, and some delicious lemon and garlic-marinated anchovies (kindly given to me by Lola Espana to try). While the anchovies are obviously not Kentish, I must admit that they combined beautifully with the rest of the salad, particularly the sorrel. You could easily use, say, mackerel, sardines, whitebait, or even sprats instead, if you want to use locally-caught fish.
So what went in the salad? Mizuna, wild rocket, courgette flowers, borage flowers, red-veined sorrel, egg, anchovies, croutons. And finished with a a generous drizzle of local rapeseed oil.