Dusk picnic on the allotment – broad beans, peas and crispy ham with goat’s cheese

Ok, so I’m trying really hard to get our French trip written up, but there’s so much I want to share that I’m still working on it when I have the time.  It will come, I promise.  With it very damp and grey outside (and on Midsummer!) I wanted to share our cheerful, warm, sunny evening meal last night which we made and ate on our allotment.

This is by far my favourite thing to do at the moment – cook and eat at the allotment.  I wish moments like that would never end.  We wanted to recreate a meal we made in France, which was broad beans and beans tossed with crispy ham and loaded onto slithers of fresh bread.

I adore the repetitive but satisfying business of podding peas and broad beans – some might find it mind numbingly boring, but I love it.  After they’d all been podded, we blanched them in a pan of boiling water over the camping stove and then quickly cooled them down was cold water.  Next I spent ages more slipping the broad beans out of their silvery green coats.

Mr Rigg heated a frying pan and crisped up some Jambon de Bayonne (or something like that!) brought back from a French market, then we tipped in the broad beans and peas and tossed to warm through.  A gorgeous stick of Wurtzelbread from Barbakan was sliced and drizzled generously with extra virgin olive oil before topping with piles of the beans, peas and ham.

A few specks of goat’s cheese were crumbled on top before we shovelled them into our mouths.  It would probably be easier to toast the bread but we like this messy version – the olive oil dribbles down your fingers and chin, the peas go flying and the bread bows beneath the weight of its topping.  But its fab.

We finished the evening with a walk with Buddy around the allotment, admiring everyone’s plots, before inspecting a slug that had made its way into the mug of broad bean shells – we even heard it taking bites!  It was pretty magical, even if it was a slug – I never realised you could hear them munching.