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This Broad Bean, Cucumber and Radish Salad brings together the most of seasonal summer ingredients from garden for a simple, refreshing salad that will work with practically any summer meal. I know I’m usually a big fan of big, bold salads with lots of different flavours going on like my Beetroot and Pistachio Salad with Whipped Feta, or my White Bean & Avocado Salad, but I like the simple elegance of good ingredients here and their vibrant green on the plate.
And it is still utterly delicious, not a boring salad at all. Just simple and restrained enough for everyday.
The broad beans – Italian from the Water Lane farmers market whilst we wait for the first British beans to arrive – may not be local, but otherwise the radishes and mint came from my garden, paired with one of my parents cucumbers. Along with some summer staples of your best extra virgin olive oil, flaky sea salt and mint you can grow practically everything for this salad yourself, if you’re that way inclined.
How to prepare broad beans for salads
The only part of this dish that involves a bit of effort is skinning the broad beans; if you leave their skins once you’ve popped them out of their velvety pods they can be a bit tough to chew (I only really leave them on when I’m blitzing them up with feta to make a dip) but if you quickly blanch them in salted water before plunging them into a bowl of ice water the skins will pop off pretty easily once you insert the tip of your fingernail into one.
A few quick substitutions
I do think ingredient substitutions on the internet sometimes go to far – totally changing the character of the recipe for the sake of the recipe writer trying to please everyone all the time with a myriad of options, but as this is a dish designed to showcase the brilliance of simply dressed seasonal ingredients there are a few I find acceptable here:
Use fresh dill, tarragon or marjoram. At this time of year I rarely buy herbs as they’re all at their best in pots growing just outside the kitchen door. If you don’t have mint to hand dill, tarragon and marjoram will all work well instead.
Use garden peasor sugar snaps. If you don’t have broad beans but you do grow peas they’ll also work beautifully here, as would sugar snaps shredded on the diagonal.
Change up the crunch. As well as adding vibrance to this Broad Bean, Cucumber and Radish Salad and a splash of pink, the radish is mostly there for crunch, so if you don’t have any add roughly chopped pistachios or cobnuts – both delicate enough not to dominate. The broad beans are the star of this salad, after all.
Use white balsamic vinegar. I’m a big fan of white balsamic (also sold as ‘white condiment’) as a sweeter alternative to white wine vinegar, without the sometimes cloying sweetness of regular balsamic. If you don’t have any lemons to hand, add white balsamic to the broad bean mixture, to taste.
This simple and refreshing Broad Bean, Cucumber and Radish Salad recipe makes the post of seasonal summer ingredients for a simple side salad to serve alongside practically any other summer recipe.
Ingredients
Scale
150g (5 1/4 oz) podded broad beans
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 sprigs fresh mint
juice of 1/4 lemon
flaky sea salt
150g (5 1/4 oz) cucumber
2 large radishes
1/2 tsp lemon zest
freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Cook the broad beans in a pan of boiling, salted water for 2 minutes before draining and immediately tipping into a bowl of ice water. Peel the tough outer skins off the broad beans and discard.
In a small bowl, combine the peeled broad beans with the olive oil, the mint leaves, very finely chopped, the lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.
Peel strips of skin off the cucumber so that it is stripy before halving it down the middle and cutting thick slices on the diagonal. Scatter these across a serving dish, followed by the radishes cut into thin half moons.
Spoon the broad bean, mint and olive oil mixture over the salad. Top with the lemon zest, a few grinds of black pepper and a little more sea salt.
Notes
If you don’t have the time to skin the broad beans, fresh garden peas can be easily substituted.
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