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A fairly quick and delightful summer salad. A base of new potatoes, raddish, cherry tomatoes and asparagus with a rouille dressing, hard-boiled quail eggs and kippers.

Kippers are smoked Herring from Scotland, but other smoked oily fish like Mackerele will also work well.

Clean and steam small young potatoes, skin on.

Clean and cut an assortment of raddishes into chunky pieces.

Cut the cherry tomatoes into neat halves.

Blanch some asparagus briefly, then shock in iced water so that it keeps its colur and a little crispness. We use green asparagus for a lack of options, but white asparagus would be good, too.

Add chives and a light sprinkling of fresh lemon thyme leaves.

Make a rouille: whisk four egg yolks vigerously, slowly adding olive oil until the mix emulsifies into a mayonnaise. Then add a pinch of salt, half a teaspoon of mustard, a crushed clove of garlic, a pinch of cayenne pepper and three pinches of smoked paprika powder. Add a splash of lime juice and whisk, then cool the rouille until it is time to serve.

Boil quail eggs (6 per portion). They take approximately 4 minutes to boil from room temperature into boiling water. Shock them really well in very cold water, then peel.

To assemble the salad, mix the base ingredients together with the rouille, then add the quail eggs and chunky pieces of smoked fish (kippers, mackerel). Toss lightly and enjoy.

Herring Salad is one of those dishes I never quite like when I think of it. But when it is prepared, refreshing and chilled, a feast for the eye and a variety of textures and flavours, I just cannot get enough of it. Just look at it!

And the best of all: this goes perfectly with Bretzeln. Bretzeln and Herring Salad are made for each other, but you might also enjoy it with steamed or baked potatoes.

It’s pretty simple to make, but takes some time to prepare all the ingredients:

First, the herring. I buy packs of Herring filets, marinaded in oil. Rinse the oil, pat dry, and cut into large yet bite-sized chunks. One 400g pack will give a generous portion of salad for two (two main meal portions, maybe some leftover for lunch on the following day). The following is on the basis of 400g / two to three generous portions:

Peel two sharp apples (Braeburn or Red Kidds Orange). Cut into eights, then cut those into three or four pieces each.

Consider filetting one blood orange and one grapefruit. Add the filets (maybe cut in pieces).

Remove the bitter cores from two Endive salads, cut these into large chunks.

Remove the seeds from a medium-sized salad cucumber. Feed the skin to the Guinea Pigs, and cut the remainder into pretty chunks.

Very thinly slice one large red onion.

Very thinly slice one medium-sized bulb of fennel.

Add whatever else meets your fancy. For example, diced beetroot, rings of romana peppers, salmon roe and hard-boiled quail eggs work well.

Add a generous amount of freshly chipped dill (minus the stalks!).

For the dressing, mix 150ml soured cream with a teaspoon of crushed black pepper, a splash of cider vinegar, a splash of olive oil, half a teaspoon of mustard. Mix everything together, the add some more dill tips.

This needs to rest for one hour. Perfect for making Bretzels!

You might also be interested in our gorgeous Kippers Salad.

Bacalhau is the Portuguese word for cod, commonly understood to mean salted and dried cod. Bacalhau is not a meal per se, but quickly transforms a humble bachelor meal into something delicious.

Well, OK, I say quickly because it takes only minutes to cook, but the preparation of salt fish takes some planning ahead. Salted cod, or Bacalhau, needs to soak in water for at least 24 hours, with fresh water and a rinse at least 3 times over that period.

As I discovered years after writing this recipe initially, the simple solution to making this a true quickie is not to use salted cod. In essence, don’t make Bacalhau. Instead we use smoked Haddock, the undied lightly smoked Haddock available from most fish counters in the UK. Just skin it and flake it into the potatoes a few minutes before adding the eggs.

It also helps to have some steamed potatoes ready, preferably young and clean ones of a waxy variety with their skin on. We often have some left-over potatoes, and this dish is just the perfect way to use them.

Heat a frying pan to moderate heat, melt a tablespoon of butter and an equal amount of olive oil. Cut the potatoes into chunky pieces and fry them gently.

After a few minutes, add a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut into halves, a handful of chopped spring onions, and flakes of soaked and rinsed Bacalhau. I use about the same volume of potatoes and fish. Add pepper, but be careful with salt, as your fish might still bring in more than enough.

Toss the mixture about for a minute, then crack two eggs over it.

I don’t want to scramble the dish, so I put a lid on for 3 minutes. This allows the egg to set through the trapped heat. Remove the lid and add a generous amount of capers. Allow some of the juices to evaporate and serve with a crisp white wine or, if the fish has a lot of salt left, a lot of water.

Simply, savoury and utterly delicious, cooked in minutes but requires some planning.