Spring fever

Spring, they say, is when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, but as I am neither young nor male, my thoughts of spring tend to turn to more tasty things like broad beans, fresh peas and strawberries.

And judging by the huge piles of broad beans that are currently on sale, maybe some of our more enterprising farmers should get together and organise a ful fest (broad beans festival), as well as a strawberry fest.

Having emerged like a slightly wrinkly butterfly from my woolly winter chrysalis, it’s time to forget about stews, thick soups and hearty pies until the autumn, and concentrate on the lighter goodies that come with lighter days.

A nice light quiche filled with ham and loads of spring vegetables is a good place to start, and like all good tarts, it has more filling than pastry. It sets to a lovely creamy consistency and is perfect served with just a salad.

An equally light and ‘soupy’ risotto primavera, also full of vegetables, is delicious on its own and it makes a super vegetarian meal. Or you can turn it into a more man-size supper by adding either a grilled chicken breast or leg, or a pork chop.

Chickens at the moment all seem to be plump and meaty and are very good value. While my son and his family were staying over Easter, I bought two whopping great chickens which I roasted with some herbs. They really were good, and fed seven of us with plenty over for a cold salad next day, plus lots of trimmings to use for a curry.

So I decided that in future I will buy a big chicken and cut it up into joints instead of buying ready-cut pieces. But probably the novelty will soon wear off and I’ll go back to buying joints again.

I’ve started to use quinoa quite a lot recently. It’s a bit lighter than rice and quite an amazing little seed. It contains all the necessary amino acids that make it a complete protein, so it is an ideal vegetarian food – and it just happens to go very well with some of my nice big chicken pieces cut from the nice fat chicken I bought this week.

I buy quinoa from my usual supermarket, which stocks a large range of Good Earth products, but I’m sure all the other supermarkets stock it, too.

In an attempt to overcome my ‘fishy’ prejudices, we have been eating a lot more salmon recently. I have previously baked salmon wrapped in Parma ham and I’ve always been surprised at how well ‘surf and turf’ go together.

This time, I used Italian pancetta sautéed together with a large chopped fennel bulb. I poached the salmon, then flaked it and tossed it with a warm potato, pancetta and fennel salad – perfect for the (hopefully) coming warmer weather.