Ricotta, Radish, Mint and Fennel Salad

I’m working on my salad repertoire... The menu, at my new venture Cook House, will be full of local seasonal flavour, huge delicious salads, salt beef bagels, roast chicken sandwiches with homemade mayonnaise, granola, stewed fruit, the occasional bacon sandwich, I’m nearly ready to show you the website... so watch this space...

This is a very simple salad I’ve been making for a while now, originally from the Polpo recipe book, I have free styled a bit. It’s really delicious. The radishes are my own, they are so easy to grow and I love the real kick of spice you get from home grown radishes, a much more powerful tasty version of the little bags in the supermarket. I’m also going to give homemade ricotta a go and try it with that... I’ll keep you posted.

These amounts will make one large plate of salad. Use a mandolin or a very sharp knife and thinly slice a big handful of radishes, take half a fennel bulb and thinly slice that too. Add everything to a large bowl. If you have some fresh radish leaves you can thinly slice the small ones and scatter them in, then add a large handful of roughly chopped mint. Add two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the juice of quarter of a lemon, add more to taste, and a pinch of salt and lots of black pepper. Toss the salad and scatter over a large plate. Then crumble half a pot of ricotta over the top of everything and drizzle over a little more olive oil...

This is delicious with spicy radishes, aniseed fennel and creamy ricotta, fresh mint and lemon, it’ll be on the menu soon, when I’m open and the thunder stops...