THE ART OF FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

Declare warm salad season open with an earthy dish reminiscent of holidays past

I’ve been daydreaming recently about those thick, sharp vinaigrettes you get in French bistros; the sort that slap you round the mouth. In a meal that should probably be all about the crispy fries or the perfectly cooked steak, it’s the handful of vinegary leaves that often makes it for me. Someone was making a warm goat’s cheese salad on Instagram the other day (one where a hunk of cheese is rolled in sesame seeds, fried and plonked, oozing, on a bed of leaves). I had a Pavlovian response and found myself walking to the shop to buy the ingredients.

Salads fall into two camps, I find. In the first are those where one central ingredient is allowed to shine – a few ripe, in-season tomatoes with flakey salt and good oil, a perfect lettuce dressed with wine vinegar and chives, or some roasted earthy beetroot tossed with thick balsamic. Careful dressing is key here, and with the right balance of salt, acid and fat, I could eat plates of it with just some good bread.

The second camp is the “more is more” kind. The warm, chunky, crunchy, creamy, everything you really want to eat thrown together and called a “salad”, kind of salad. The sort that is more main meal than side dish. Tatties, hunks of fried bread, seven-minute eggs, pickley bits – anything goes, just follow your tastebuds.

This recipe makes me think of a fantastic, simple holiday dish my uncle makes of spicy sausages with peppers and onions. It’s reinvented here with fennel (roasted and pickled), a ton of parsley, and a lemony dressing. Give it a try and declare warm salad season open.