Crafting ‘a perfect lunch’ menu with seasonal ingredients

Photos by Laura Edwards/Octopus Books.

the best of early summer

asparagus, peas & radishes with pistachio pesto
crab, tomato & saffron tart
gooseberry & almond cake with lemon thyme syrup

The title of this menu is a bit cruel because a perfect lunch is the stuff of dreams. A sprawl of garrulous friends, a rumpled tablecloth, an assortment of glasses and bottles… this scene has been painted, photographed and filmed. (You can never remember the name of the film, but French ‘perfect lunch’ scenes are invariably presided over by a beautiful woman d’un certain age , while the Italian versions feature families with boundless, gesticulating energy.)

In real life, lunches can be more like a scene from a Danish Dogme film (tears, imploding families, bitter truths). Perhaps because I watched too many French and Italian films in my teens and twenties, I’ve given the perfect lunch a lot of thought and have often strained every sinew in an attempt to deliver it. In the past, I’ve got up at 6am to put on slow-cooked pork… and was therefore ready to go back to bed just as everyone arrived. On another occasion, a guest took me into the kitchen and started to cry, because her husband was having an affair. I did want to sympathize but, really, I was more worried about overcooking the fish.

Basically, I have tried too hard – and not always in the right way – which is why a perfect lunch is a perplexing concept. In our efforts to be generous, to cater for all tastes and to lavish love, we make dishes that are too complicated or cook too many of them. (I am totally guilty of this last one, always adding just one more glorious vegetable ensemble.) You, the host and cook, end up back-timing dishes at the stove rather than chatting at the table. The food, because you’ve evidently put such a lot into it, is praised in a way that stops the flow of conversation (yes, the praise is nice, but it’s not the point). By the time the guests leave you’re exhausted, and a sense of anticlimax descends as you pack the leftovers into the fridge. It has not been the relaxed affair you envisaged.

But it’s difficult if it isn’t part of your birthright – by which I mean you’re not French or Italian – to present food just at that perfectly pitched level of casualness. So this is the challenge: to make a lunch that doesn’t frazzle you, where the food is good but not spectacular (in that ‘look what I’ve made’ kind of way), and the number of dishes is limited.

This menu works. The asparagus needs to be cooked at the last minute, but that’s do-able. If you don’t want to make the pesto, then just serve the asparagus with melted butter, or melted butter and some chunks of creamy, mild goat’s cheese scattered over the top. The tart case and filling can be made in advance (keep them separate), then all you have to do is assemble and bake it; it’s so rich that complicated side dishes would ruin it, so just compose a leaf salad. The pudding can be cooked the day before. If you don’t want to bake a cake, serve poached gooseberries with whipped cream into which you’ve stirred some elderflower cordial (shortbread biscuits alongside would be good, too).

Although this is a considered meal – it takes advantage of the best ingredients around in early summer – it doesn’t require a lot of skill. Enthusiastic cooks will find it hard not to add just one more dish: resist.