Thin Pickings

The title could suggest bad times, but it really refers to using salad thinnings. One of many gardening disciplines we have not been good at is thinning crops out early. Do so and the remaining plants thrive; delay and they are weakened by the competition (an interesting thought for free market dogmatists).

There's a second good reason for the task, as far as salad-stuffs are concerned anyway, and that's the small plates of tasty leaves it produces. Yesterday we had a starter that used such greenery picked and washed minutes before we ate it.

Much though I shrink from the modish 'micro-crops' espoused by Raymond Blanc, who makes claims to the effect that they offer the essence of a plant, they are undoubtedly good to eat. Dressing could be oil and salt alone. Last night I added a few slices of cucumber and a handful of little (cheap) prawns with a pinch of paprika, cooked in butter with a bit of chopped apple, the two then flambeed with a spoonful of apple brandy. In the spring and summer I probably cook with spirits more than drink them. The juices formed the dressing, good enough to be mopped up at the end.

That starter for three cost at most £1.50. It not only tasted good, but with red and green leaves, pink prawns and orange-brown paprika it brightened the table and on a miserably wet day was cheering. Austerity cooking need not - should not - be dull.