10 salads that will see you through to September

An invitation not to cook this summer

Hi, I’m Anna Jones and welcome to my newsletter. It’s great to have you here. If you have found yourself here but are not yet subscribed then you can sort that out below…

Melon, potato + feta salad. Credit: Issy Croker

This week’s newsletter is an invitation not to cook. For the coming weeks I will not cook. I will, chop, season and assemble. Summer cooking, to me, is about assembling peak summer ingredients with some good seasoning and some interesting flavours and herbs.

Right now, when ingredients are at their absolute apex of sweetness, ripeness and summerness, is simply not the time to cook. I could forgive some just boiled pasta thrown into garlic, caper and olive oil dressed chopped tomatoes or turning on the oven very early in the day to make a focaccia to dip into your assemblies of summer fruit and veg but, on the whole, no cooking really happens in my house.

I roughly follow this formula - I pick two or three fruits or vegetables, perfectly in season, season with salt and acid (maybe even a bit of chilli or spice), add a flavouring or two and serve it with something filling fresh cheese, eggs, beans, flatbreads. You could even serve it on ice.

Ice cold melon, tomato + mozzarella with chilli. Credit: Rachael Pilston

All summer long and especially in this heat, lunches and suppers will be a series of….

Arranging these fruits/vegetables:

• Tomatoes (good ones)

• Corn on the cob (cut from the cob into kernels)

• Cucumber

• Melon

• Watermelon

• Peaches/Nectarines

• Cherries

• Apricots

• Any stone fruit

• Runner beans (blanched or charred)

• Green beans (blanched or charred)

• Courgettes (thinly sliced, roasted or charred)

• Red peppers (for me these must be roasted or roasted from a jar)

With these flavourings:

• Summer herbs, this year it’s tarragon, lovage and fennel fronds

• Green chilli

• Capers, from the jar or crisped quickly in oil

• Pickled chillies

• Gherkins/pickles

• Dates

• Olives

• Thinly sliced and fried garlic

Sometimes with some dairy;

• Feta

• Mozzarella

• Ricotta

• Thick Greek yoghurt or labneh

• Crème fraîche

• A jammy egg

And serving it all with:

• My favourite crisps, I’m into Torres Pickle Crisps right now

• Flatbreads

• Jarred chickpeas

• Some toasted sourdough

It is actually as simple as that because I can safely say that any combination of these things will make a good summer dinner. I will rarely reach for a pan until mid September.

Green melon, cucumber + herby green yoghurt freezer salad. Credit: Rachael Pilston

Of course there can be some cooking (if you really must)....

• Tomatoes could be blistered in a pan or the oven with olive oil and garlic

• Corn on the cob could be cut from its cob into kernels and charred in the pan to take the raw edge off or charred whole on the BBQ

• Peaches or nectarines could be charred in butter in a pan, cut side down or on a grill of BBQ

• Runner beans should be cooked, simply blanched in salted water until they have lost their squeak or charred whole in a hot pan or on a BBQ

• Courgettes can be quickly pan fried, grilled, roasted or charred

• Peppers - these would be the only thing I insist you cook as I don’t like raw red peppers, if you use some from a jar I will not be mad.

• Feta can be roasted in the oven with spices, lemon and oil for 30 mins

• Garlic - I am not a raw garlic on salads person so if I am eating garlic in the summer I fry it (you could also add capers and olives if they fit) in olive oil or butter until crisp and if the butter browns all the better

• New potatoes can be quickly roasted and crisped up in the oven

• 7-minute egg - this is an egg boiled in water at a rolling boil for 7 minutes then drained, the shell is smashed by shaking it in the pan then it is covered in cold water and then peeled. This to me is the perfect egg.

Crispy, crunchy hot weather salad: Credit Rachael Pilston

10 salads that will carry you into to September:

If all of this feels too free then I see you, and here are ten summer salad recipes to follow along with all summer instead.

• Melon, potato + feta salad

• Crispy, crunchy hot weather salad

• Ice cold melon, tomato + mozzarella with two chillies

• Too Hot salad

• All summer salad

• Green melon, cucumber + herby green yoghurt freezer salad

• Summer corn + tomato salad

• Icy melon salad

• All time favourite chopped salad

• Spiced + herbed Puy lentil salad

• Blackened corn salad

• Special mention to this no cook tomato pasta from nearly 10 years ago!

Icy melon salad. Credit: Rachael Pilston

Some good things to click on:

• The grandmother of summer knives

• On preferring Hellman’s mayonnaise

• Organic veg but even better

• How to make your dips look pretty

• Cold brew everything, make it sparkling?

• Need to get my hands in one of these, please

• Perfect, miniature vegetable candles

• The sun and the moon

• Italy’s magical lentil bloom

• The best and the worst mozzarella

• Butterscotch pocket frogs

• More from me on salads

Spiced + herbed puy lentil salad. Credit: Rachael Pilston

My cookbooks (there are five) are available here. The latest is Easy Wins, a Sunday Times bestseller. There are also hundreds of free recipes on my website which you can find here.

Can I please ask that if you like this week’s newsletter that you add a like or comment below and perhaps share it with someone who might also like it. It’s free for everyone this week and a lot of time, love and salads have gone into it. Thank you.