It’s the BBQ season so I was looking for some different types of salad.  This is adapted  from Sabrina Ghayour’s Sirocco: Fabulous Flavours from the East and very quick and easy. We also had a Vietnamese noodle salad, which I made with bean thread/mung bean vermicelli from Thailand, with a hot spicy dressing  (the dipping sauce for the summer rolls) but forgot to take a photo. The piece de resistance was our home-make jerk chicken…very, very hot but also easy! 

Serves 6 as a side

2 bunches spring onions
Olive oil, lots of it!
750g new potatoes
Salt and black pepper
20g dill, fronds and stems finely chopped
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
150g raw fresh or frozen peas

Method

Heat a griddle pan or frying pan over a high heat, and the oven to 220C/425F/gas 7. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil over a medium-high heat and blanch the spring onions for two minutes, then drain on kitchen paper.

Drizzle the spring onions with a little oil and put them on the hot griddle pan. Sear them for a couple of minutes on each side until they are charred, then take them off the heat and set aside.

Put the whole potatoes on to the prepared baking tray, drizzle generously with olive oil and season. Using your hands, toss the potatoes to coat them in the oil and seasoning. Roast for 30-40 minutes (depending on the size of the potatoes) or until they are cooked through.

Put the potatoes in a mixing bowl, add slugs of olive oil and, using a fork, roughly crush the potatoes without mashing them to a puree. Add the dill, garlic and peas and gently fold them in. Add a little more salt and pepper to taste and another drizzle of olive oil. Cut each of the spring onions in half, fold them into the crushed potatoes and serve at once.

These are my home-grown salad leaves that I used in the bean thread said, along with grated cucumber, carrot, roasted peanuts, coriander, mint  and pea and bean sprouts.