Gimme some lovage! Sorry, dreadful pun, but I adore this herb. You rarely see lovage in the shops but its easy to find in garden centres and grow for yourself. It has a lovely savoury quality with the acidity of parsley but a really deep and unusual flavour. It goes really well just chopped roughly, or even as whole leaves into a salad. I was lucky enough to have some home-grown Charlotte potatoes, green and yellow runner beans, butterhead lettuce and some beetroot so this made for a sensational salad with a really different taste.
To prepare the beetroot, do not peel it or top-and-tail it. Just plonk it into salted boiling water and boil for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on size. Cool with cold water and, when it is cold enough to handle, just rub the peel off. Take off the top and bottom and cut into slices.
Boil the potatoes until just cooked, they will continue to cook in their steam while they are cooling.
Runner beans need to be topped-and-tailed and use a peeler to run down the spines, this bit can be a bit fibrous. Chop the prepared green beans and the yellow beans and put them into salted water that is on the rolling boil. Cook for 1-2 minutes then throw into ice-cold water. This stops cooking immediately and preserves the colour.
This salad felt very English, so I made a (French) dressing from 8 tablespoons rapeseed oil, 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar, half teaspoon of English mustard, a teaspoon of honey and the juice of half a lemon. Give that a whisk until thickened and season to taste.
Chop the lovage very roughly, along with a small bunch of chives and add to the beans, tomatoes and cooked, sliced potatoes. Mix the whole lot with the dressing, reserving a little to drizzle at the end. Serve with the beautiful beetroot, some butterhead lettuce and a hard boiled egg. Delicious.
Of course any salad combination will do, use up whatever is fresh, colourful and growing nearby.
Brina
August 12, 2020 at 7:46 pmLooks amazing!