Summer vegetables

Monsieur Bois’ finest tomatoes. I came back from the market with a bumper crop.

And I am relieved to have brought them back at all. You get into the habit of expecting stall holders to be there every week.  But when I walked up to the Vernoux market the jovial rotund figure of my favourite tomato breeder wasn’t there. Someone else had his pitch.

Apparently the poor man is having health problems. But the replacement market gardener (a good forty years younger) assured me that all the tomatoes were those of the venerable monsieur. So he was represented in veg if not the flesh.

That’s a relief. I do count on them. So much so that I have even stopped growing my own tomatoes in the garden.

But one crop you cannot buy are broad beans. I was so worried that I had let these beauties go over. They looked huge on the plants.

This was my second harvest and I have a lot more to go.  But a quick blanch and the beans were perfect.

I did have to peel them which is often fiddly.

But dressed with beetroot, fresh mint, a pinch of chilli flakes, a cup of cooked green lentils and some ewe’s milk cheese (less salty than feta but very similar) it was the best dish of the dinner party last night.