Shake it up

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To my surprise yesterday morning, I discovered my first broad beans of the season. Yay! Unfortunately there’s not much else in the garden but a few teeny tiny purple and white carrots and the odd flower from a herb or lettuce that’s bolted. 

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Garden salad with chive, mint and coriander flower dressing.

Nobody needs a recipe for a garden salad (don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence here). Simply toss together whatever you have in your garden, or like for most of us, probably the contents of your salad drawer, with joyful abundance and dress with this divine dressing.

If you don’t have coriander flowers, very likely, just add a few leaves of coriander. I actually just added them because they’re pretty, but they taste rather nice too! I’m not adding quantities for the herbs, it all depends on personal taste, but I like mine quite herby.

Dressing:

¼ cup best Olive oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard

teeny pinch of sugar

salt and black pepper

mint, roughly chopped

chives, roughly chopped

few coriander flowers

Shake it all about, splash and toss! Enjoy.

Vietnam Va Va Voom!

 

I got this hot chilli sauce as a gift from my boss and friend, Justine Drake, when she got back home from Nam. She found it in some obscure little village somewhere in Vietnam where it was made in a hut by the same family for hundreds years (or at least that’s what I like to think). The best way to describe it, is that it's a little like the Malaysian sambal Bajek, a sweet, salty, slightly smoky, caramelized onion chili like paste. Oh, and hot as hell. I love it on pretty much anything Asian: added to Thai curries, stirred through noodles or simply added to stir fries for a little voomah. And the packaging is pretty cool too, hey?