One of the things I love best about summer is making a cooked salad and eating a delicious plate of it with a glass of red wine as the sun goes down in our west-facing kitchen. To be honest, these sort of salads just come together in a stream of unconsciousness: a snip of this, a crumble of that. a sizzle of something else – all ending in a delicious pile of tasty ingredients. The best ones happen on the day the Riverford box arrives; this Thursday’s ‘accidental salad’ looked like this.

Ingredients

• 200g lamb fillet lightly cooked
• 50g chorizo sausage pan fried with
• 1 courgette and
• 6 mushrooms
• broad beans
• round beans
• fresh sweetcorn stripped from the cob
• 50g feta, crumbled
• black olives
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tbsp flax seed oil (optional)
• 1 tbsp ex virgin olive oil (XVOO)
• fresh herbs (I used chopped mint and rosemary)

Method

I seasoned the lamb fillet and cooked it very briefly on a hot skillet, then set it aside to rest. Then I put the chorizo, courgette and mushrooms into the same pan and let them cook over a low heat, stirring occasionally, while I prepared the rest of the ingredients.

Next, I set a steamer going and placed the corn cobs over the bubbling water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I podded the broad beans and took the tails off the round beans before putting them over the steamer for 7 minutes.

Next I got out my big blue salad bowl and placed the vinegar and oils and herbs in the bottom, mixing them all together in the serving bowl with a whisk. Using kitchen scissors I cut the lamb into tender chunks, still pink in the middle, then added the chorizo, courgette and mushrooms, turning them all over in the dressing. Using a table knife I stripped the corn from the husks straight into the salad bowl, then added the beans. At this point I decided some black olives and feta would pull all the flavours together with a Greek twist, so in they went.

As I say, it’s all a bit accidental and not necessarily pre-planned. These salads seem to come together as I potter around the kitchen. I doesn’t even feel like cooking. But it does feel like eating!

This can easily be made vegetarian by omitting the chorizo.