Kale & pickled cherry salad (with crispy butterbeans) for an unexpected early crop

Raw shredded kale, pickled cherries to lighten the mood, toasted walnuts and seeds; plus, blistered, golden, crispy bites of roasted garlic and thyme butterbeans that will change everything.

It’s summer. Apparently.

The season of salads and crisp raw veg, when the heat is so deliciously soporific that all you want to eat is a chilled cucumber, possibly accompanied by a G&T. Except July did not get the memo this year and in the UK we’ve had one of the wettest July’s on record.

Still, I will not be deterred from my summer salads.

Though in this weather, delicate, frilly lettuces just won’t cut it. Something hearty is needed. But nothing so sturdy as a ‘warm salad’ - it’s not Autumn yet after all. I visit the brassica patch in hope of inspiration and find that my uncharacteristically early planting has resulted in a forest of kale, glistening with beads of recent rain and ready to pick. These first young leaves, massaged into supplication and tossed with cherries for a fresh, juicy pop, will offer just the salad for a wet summer’s day.

Kale and pickled cherry salad (with crispy butterbeans)

Raw kale gets a bad press, but if you finely shred it and take care with the massaging, it transforms. The pickled cherries lighten the mood, bringin fruity, sweet-yet-sour bursts to each mouthful.

For paid subscribers, this week’s ‘Extra Helping’ (which is an added bonus bit to the recipe like a way to use leftovers, a switch it up option, or an addition to the main dish) is a crispy, herby butterbean topping that I promise you will find very addictive and endlessly useful for bringing crunch and substance not only to this salad but many other dishes (or just to nibble on with a beer).

Serves 2

• 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar

• 1 tbsp runny honey

• 100g cherries, stoned and halved

• 2 red onions

• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 150g kale leaves (younger leaves are best, avoid anything old and wizened)

• 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

• 1 tbsp sunflower seeds

• 50g walnut halves

Start with the cherries. Combine the vinegar and honey in a bowl, add the halved cherries and muddle everything together. Set aside for at least 15 minutes (but up to 24 hours) to pickle.

Peel the onions and cut into wedges. Break apart the layers a little then toss in one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. Arrange in a baking tin and roast at 210C for 15 minutes until charred at the edges.

Meanwhile, wash the kale (evicting any caterpillars), strip the leafy part of the kale from the stalks and trim any damaged tips (both for the compost bin) . Role the leafy greenery into a fat cigar and shred into very fine ribbons. Take your time, it needs to be almost vermicelli noodle fine.  Transfer to a bowl and add the remaining three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil plus two tablespoons of the cherry pickling juice and a pinch of salt. Now, here’s where we transform the rough, tough kale into a delicate sweet raw salad: massage the olive and pickling juices into the kale ribbons. Think deep tissue rather than relaxing spa day and go hard for about a minute. The kale will become soft and yielding. Set aside to recover for a minute.

Put a dry frying pan over a medium heat and add the pumpkin and sunflower seeds and the walnuts. Toast for 3-5 minutes until just golden.

Tip the nuts and seeds into the kale along with the pickled cherries (drained of any remaining liquor) and the roast onions. Toss with gentle hands then pile everything onto plates and serve.

Below this line, paid subscribers will find a PDF of the recipe and some extra bonus content in the form of an ‘Extra Helping’, which this week is a second PDF recipe for the butterbeans. If you’d like to sign up, it costs roughly the price of a punnet of strawberries a month.