One day I hope to make this meal again, with everything but the sausages grown in my garden or on our allotment.  I do believe that the best food is made with what’s available seasonally and from an idea of what it is you want to eat.

What started as a simple meal (and possibly one of our favourites), of grilled sausages, new potatoes and salad, turned into something a bit more interesting.  The sausages came from the fab new Kenyon Hall Farm Shop, the new potatoes were boiled and violently shaken with salty butter and lots of mint from the garden.

But it was the salad that became something far better, using up odds and ends from the garden and the fridge.  To a bowl I finely sliced spring onions, added a splash of white wine vinegar and some salt – I like to do this to take the edge off the onions.  Otherwise I find that all you can taste is onion.

Next I sliced into fine slithers some cucumber (grown in Cheshire) and a small courgette – our first from the allotment (which is looking much better than it did here).  I podded some incredible fat peas, picked up from a small farm gate stand just down the road.  I had been weeding my raised beds and accidentally pulled up a couple of small carrots – these I also finely sliced.

Self-seeded in my raised vegetable beds are also hundreds of Heartsease – so we picked a good handful of these tiny, delicate, edible flowers.  I decided to make the sauce in the bowl, so I added a bit more white wine vinegar to the onions, some bright yellow rapeseed oil, salt, pepper, a drizzle of agave nectar to sweeten and a blob of Dijon mustard.

This was mixed all together before I heaped in my salad leaves (sadly not homegrown), along with all the vegetables.  Tossed together to coat in the dressing this salad was another of those moments you surprise yourself having made something that tastes pretty darn good.

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