How To Make A Garden Salad

Today, we're going to do how to make a garden salad, a really delicious English summery dish. And the ingredients we've got here are some lovely, fresh English new potatoes, some runner beans which we've cut up, we've blanched in boiling water and then refreshed in cold water and just dried them off, some ruby chard and some land's lettuce and some really good full-of-flavour ruby red English tomatoes, the best you can get. And then, we've got just some spring onion which we're going to slice and pop on the top for some decoration and flavour, and we're going to dress it out with a mint dressing.

So, very simply, we're going to make the mint dressing and then mix all the ingredients together. So, in there, we're going to put about a dessert spoon of honey, about a dessert spoon of cider vinegar, 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and we always use a really good extra virgin olive oil for this. It must be full of flavor.

Spend a little money on it, it's really worth it. Extra virgin olive oil should be used just to dress, not to cook with. We want to have all that lovely flavour and be able to taste it rather than cooking it out.

And then, just the juice of half a lemon, a little seasoning, a bit of salt a bit of pepper, and then, we're going to whisk all of that together. Going to give it a taste – lovely, really fresh! Nice and sharp with those ingredients. Then, we're going to mix all the ingredients together and dress it out on a plate.

Chop these tomatoes a little bit into chunks. Take the end off, and then literally just halve it, quarter it, and quarter them again. And then, I'm just going to finely chop a spring onion.

We do it on the slant so that it looks really nice and pretty. Then mix all the ingredients together. So, in go the runner beans and the potatoes which have been cooked until they're soft, the tomatoes, fresh garden peas and the leaves.

And with a salad, you never dress it until the last minute otherwise the leaves will go really limp. And then, I'm just cutting up some fresh mint which again will go black if you cut this in advance. So, literally, do it at the last minute.

We want to taste the mint; it's part of the salad so we're not going to chop it too finely. Mint's going in and the spring onions, we're just going to pop on the top. Literally just put a little bit in, you may not need all of it.

It's good to use your hands and literally spread the vinaigrette evenly over the salad. There we go. Then let's put it in there.

Beautiful colors, isn't it? Lovely, really lovely! And then, a few spring onions on the top. That's how to make a garden salad. .