There is an abundance of salad stuff around and only a fool could fail to take advantage of it. I don't let a day go by without something green and leafy on the table, most often some mixed leaves - little gem, butterhead, mustard greens and some spiky mizuna from the garden. I always throw some herbs in. Anyone who has remembered to water their window box will know that this is the month that everything from tarragon to coriander is at its most green and aromatic.
Most herb gardens are probably overflowing with nasturtiums and lavender by now but hopefully there will be some fennel fronds and chives in there as well. We want only the tenderest summer herbs for our green salads. Those who really like onion flavours should throw the pink chive flowers in too. Absurdly cute, but they pack quite a punch, so go easy. And look out for the feathery leaves of chervil, the most fragile herb of all. No longer fashionable, it has rather lost its way yet has the most gentle aniseed flavour and is very pretty.
Either way, this is the time to think about that forgotten classic, a melting, gentle omelette aux herbes. Make your omelette as usual, two eggs, gently mixed, a little butter in the pan - you know better than I - but then add a good tablespoon of chopped chives, parsley, tarragon and chervil both to the eggs and then again to the omelette before you fold it. Slightly warmed by the eggs, the herbs will be at their most fragrant.
The aniseed herbs: chervil, tarragon and fennel seem especially appropriate for summer. Pound them with a tiny clove of fresh garlic and stir them into your next dish of mayonnaise. This is the one to eat with cold baked sea bass or salmon or, better still, as a dip for any of the baby artichokes, barely bigger than a tulip in bud, that are coming from Italy at the moment. Ours will no doubt be along later.
Berries have never been better. Equal amounts of sun and rain have ensured one of the best berry harvests for years. There are some truly luscious strawberries about. Ignore the dull and ubiquitous Elsanta and seek out Cambridge Favourite with its old fashioned flavour. Raspberries are due and should be good this year. The most reliable way to tell is to sniff them. Any that sit and sulk without fragrance are not worth putting in your shopping bag. Leave them for the jam makers. There is no better way to enjoy a raspberry than straight from the cane and are best served plain, but having said that, they make an extraordinarily good sorbet, and I wouldn't complain if I found one in my trifle either.
The cherries have been splendid this year. I have had a bag on my desk all summer, picking at them as I work. It's either that or custard creams. When you are fed up with wolfing them from the bag then pip them with an olive stoner and add them to a dark and sumptuous berry salad. They look so sexy tossed with blackberries and blueberries. I rarely cook a cherry, though this year I made a compote by cooking the fruit, stone in, with a modicum of sugar until they bled deep red juice. They were supposed to go with a sponge cake I never got round to making, so they ended their days tipped, warm and crimson red, over two balls of vanilla ice cream.
But back to those salad leaves. The soft, gentle leaves of the floppy 'English'; the soft crinkle of the pink-mottled chicory; the long and crunchy cos - whether piled up in a basket at the farmers' market, laid out on a table at the farm gate or in soldierly lines of pillow packs in the supermarket, there is a leaf to suit every meal. And I must say a word for cress, that forgotten leaf that reminds you of childhood summer teas in the garden.
Look out for beetroot complete with their leaves. Shorn of their roots, the leaves can be plunged briefly into boiling water then either into a pan of hot butter and black pepper or shaken with some walnut or olive oil. The second 'cooking' removes some of the rather strident earthiness. Try them with cold ham. The beets themselves are so young and tender they can be boiled whole then skinned (peeling them before will allow them to bleed and loose their colour) and dunked with a sharp vinegar-based dressing. It will lift their colour and take some of the excessive sweetness away.
The plump cloves of garlic around, some from the Isle of Wight, are particularly juicy and sweet. When they are as juicy as this you can understand why old recipe books tell you to cut them in half and rub them over your salad bowl. Don't forget the spring onions for the green salad. There is no more appropriate way to use this slender allium, elegant in looks and flavour, than to trim it scrupulously and lay it whole and unblemished on a crisp English salad of little gem lettuce and cucumber. It sounds bizarre to grill them, but they take on a slight caramel sweetness when left on the ridges of a hob-top cast iron grill. You can eat them like this with a steak or slice of grilled swordfish, or, as I did the other day, with a grilled goats' cheese and sourdough toast.
Light fresh goats' cheese such as Innes buttons and the white-crusted Crottin de Chavignol are the order of the day. The very fresh goat's cheese, so young it has yet to get a crust, is perfect with cherries and even strawberries. A little white plate, a tiny snow-white cheese and a handful of berries - could there be a more charming way to end a July garden lunch?
