Charred summer greens with salsa verde beans

(Not all recipes have to rhyme, but it helps.) This picnic salad is the dish I cooked on stage at Rock Oyster Festival last weekend.

Everything needs picking.

The beans, the peas, the courgettes, the spring onions, the herbs – basically anything green - all clamour for attention. The garden is overrun with produce, desperate to be harvested.

So, typically, I go away for a long weekend.

Not on holiday, but for work. Though, frankly, when that work is a sunny weekend cooking and compering for chef friends at Rock Oyster Festival, it seems churlish to call it work.

I cooked a big veg-filled salad

Given the location, most chefs were focusing on fish for their cookery demo. Friend and substacker,

Emily Scott

, made a fantastic one pot fish curry in the blink of an eye, but we’ll have to wait for her next book for that recipe. (We also managed to arrive with exactly the same nail varnish arrangement. Great minds and all that.)

Match match from Emily’s Instagram stories

Anyway, by the time Emily, Nathan Outlaw and Jack Stein had all cooked fish I figured someone needed to represent the vegetables so I made a charred greens and beans dish, the recipe for which you can find below.

But none of this helps with the gluts

Arriving home on Sunday night, sweaty from a sweltering demo tent and a long drive back from Cornwall, I find the garden even more abundant than I left it. It’s the peak of the summer harvest and the next few weeks are going to be filled with fresh, green recipes that will bring the garden right into your kitchen.

PS.

If you didn’t make it to Rock but would like to come and cook with me, my next Seasonal Sundays class at Fortnum & Masons is on 11th August and is becoming a bit of an impromptu Substack Meet Up, which is just lovely.

As usual, we’ll shop in the Food Hall while the store is closed, then head upstairs to cook a 3-course (actually it’s more than that this month!) lunch with a cocktail, then home with a recipe pack and a head full of ideas. £45.

Here’s a summary:

gluts_gluttony

A post shared by @gluts_gluttony

This month I’ll be hero-ing raspberries, tomatoes and kohl rabi amongst other things and dishes will include kohlrabi remoulade, tomatoes in raspberry sauce, and a meadowsweet and rosé knickerbocker glory that is so joyfully naff you might need two of them.

Charred summer greens with salsa verde beans

I’ve suggested a selection of vegetables to char but use whatever greenery you have – little gem lettuce, small red onions, runner beans, etc would all work well. The butter beans must be jarred, not tinned. They play a starring role so they must be top notch and deliciously creamy. Once dressed, the salad will keep for a few hours so long as you don’t add the croutons – which makes it ideal for picnics too.

Serves 4-6

• 150g helda beans (stringless beans)

• 1 green courgette, cut into 5mm slices