From The Food Almanac

From The Food Almanac, edited by Miranda York, published by Pavilion

There is always lunch.

Adulthood is hard, we are all doomed and even the small joys which make life almost worth living – a perfect kiss, a baby’s screw-on toes – aren’t necessarily there the moment one needs them. A wonderful soul-enriching delicious lunch, however, is achievable. Necessary, even. And, luckily for us, it doesn’t require suckling pig, caviar, ortolans. Not now; not in May. The answer is salad.

 I know. But there are salads and salads: a spectrum, at one end of which lies a garnish of wilted lambs’ lettuce, a pubic frond of cress, an icy tomato. Move on, past salad-bars (sad sweetcorn niblets, bald cold chickpeas) and supermarket bags (rags of desperate romaine, swampy watercress). Onward, until you reach perfection: a garden salad, grown by you.

   I just made one for lunch: it took twenty pleasurable minutes of garden browsing. To a non-cook, this sounds ridiculous. Why not go to the local greasy spoon for a toastie? But, if one is food-obsessed, cafes can break your heart; such feeble ingredients, made so little of. Cooking for oneself is a joy and, if one is a gardener-cook, on however modest a scale, there’s nothing better than peacefully munching a plateful of leaves and shoots and flowers: the essence of spring.

  Today’s lunch for one, therefore, consists of a boiled egg and, piled high around it like a jade-and-rainbow cloud: cinnamon and Greek basil; golden marjoram; magenta pineapple-sage flowers; kale-shoots; garlic chives; three kinds of brave bitter chicory; sorrel; chard; wild and tame rocket; Japanese mustards; the sulphur-yellow flowers of neglected brassicas. There is, I notice, technically no lettuce. But there are spicy nasturtium leaves like lily-pads and their glowing honey-pepper blossoms; tastes of thyme, savory, chervil, shiso, mint, lemon verbena; neon calendula; borage petals, the hot clear blue of summer skies.

 That’s fine, you may think, for people with rolling acres, orchards, nutteries. I hate them too. My garden consists of wobbling pots on a roof-terrace: a scruffy urban jungle, so overstuffed and understyled that guests wince, as if they’ve witnessed something private. Yes, growing so much in a tiny space is hard work. But it brings joy, peace, flow: one forgets every trouble when faced with a green courgette tendril.

 A salad like this is too good for guests. Sprinkle it with oil, salt, lemon; think of it in winter with walnuts, blood orange, feta. It will give you both smugness and vitamins. It will make you, briefly, happy. Now, that’s a lunch.