Paranoid Salad and Tomato Tart

There have been a couple of very unpleasant food-poisoning events in Europe in the last few weeks, one in Germany and another in the south of France. A new form of e-coli is implicated, a particularly nasty variant which seems to kill 1% of all those who contract it and makes many more sick enough to need hospitalisation. After a lot of finger pointing at the Spanish, who appear to have been entirely innocent, the infection was tracked down to beansprouts and has been further identified as coming from some seeds supplied through an Egyptian wholesaler. At the moment I'm not aware of any other information about how the seeds became contaminated.

At the height of the first outbreak ALL salad vegetables were suspect and dire warnings were issued to avoid tomatoes, cucumbers and any sort of uncooked vegetable. Despite believing myself to be an educated sceptic and well able to understand a scientific argument I found myself unable to actually buy any of the vegetables from anywhere because, well, better safe than sorry.

I'm over it now but in case you ever find yourself in the grip of an irrational fear of salad here is a cooked version that will help you get your five a day without tears.

I had lovely vegetables from the garden, baby carrots, baby broad beans, tender young mange touts, some cabbage leaves from the baby cabbages and a courgette (not pictured)

Prepare your vegetables by washing well in cool water, then cut the roots and courgettes into small batons or cubes, shell the beans, top and tail the mange touts and cut your cabbage into small squares (take out the ribs). You could shred the cabbage if you prefer.

Bring a biggish pot of water to the boil, it needs to be quite large so that the temperature doesn't drop when you add the vegetables and keeps boiling. In turn drop your little piles of prepared veg into the pot, return to the boil for one minute and then scoop out, easiest with a slotted spoon or small sieve. Set the blanched veg to cool and drain while you attend to the next batch. When all the vegetables have been through the hot bath, drain well again and coat with your preferred dressing. I used a vinaigrette but if the salad is cool a mayonnaise or yoghurt dressing can be used. Cover and chill until needed.

To serve with the salad I had tomatoes that desperately needed using up before they went off so they were made into a very simple Tomato Tart with a yeasted dough crust, seasoned with a little garlic and some chopped chilli. I finished this with a balsamic reduction.