Warm sugar-snap pea salad with pan-fried coley

What a relief that the hungry gap is well and truly behind us - my local market has more and more different fruits and veg appearing on the stalls every week, which is good as I feel like I spent most of March surviving on carrots, cabbage and potatoes, relieved only by bags of salad and packs of imported beans to get some much-needed variety onto my plate. Not all UK produce has been picked outside yet, but I was happy to find sugar-snap peas that had been grown under glass - tiny little pods, with the peas barely formed inside and deliciously sweet.

Sugar-snaps are a great ingredient for a warm salad. This one goes particularly well with fish. I've stopped buying cod because of the low stocks but coley is a really good alternative.

It's really important to get everything ready first because the fish and the vegetables will both quickly and be ready at the same time.

What you need: 
Coley fillet
Handful sugar-snap peas
Handful green beans
Small handful of rocket
1 and 1/2 tbsp walnut oil
1/2 tbsp raspberry vinegar
Butter
A little flour
Seasoning

What to do:
Make the salad dressing by whisking the walnut oil and raspberry vinegar together with a little salt and pepper. Tip some flour on a plate or chopping board and coat the fish with it. 

Top and tail the sugar-snaps and green beans. Bring them to the boil and cook for about 4-5 minutes until they are al dente. Drain, pop back in the pan to keep warn while the fish finishes cooking, stir through the rocket and dress.

While the peas and beans are cooking melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the coley fillet over a medium to high heat - it'll need about 3-4 minutes on each side, depending on thickness.

Cook's tips:
You can find walnut oil in most decent supermarkets. It's a bit pricey (a 250ml bottle costs around £2) but its strong flavour means you don't need much so it should last a while. If you don't have walnut oil use olive oil instead but the raspberry vinegar is essential as the fruity tones match the sweetness of the peas.

Green beans French-style

I love green beans a lot but my culinary repertoire with them was very limited until I went to live in France for years. In my youth, they were served up plain boiled, as a side dish. On a good day, they were tossed in a little butter. Very occasionally they turned up in a salad nicoise or a navarin. In short, fairly dull.

So - to France. Not long after my arrival, Parisian Boy dished them up this way for supper. It was a revelation and I've been cooking them this way ever since when I've used them as a side dish.

This recipe is simplicity itself. It takes almost no time to prepare and only 10-15 minutes to cook. It goes well with grilled chops or sausages and almost any kind of fish.

What you need: 
A portion of green beans
A couple of ripe tomatoes
A couple of cloves of garlic
Olive oil

What to do:
Slice the garlic thinly. Halve the tomatoes then cut each half into quarters (so you have 8 wedges per tomato). Heat a little olive oil in a heavy frying pan over a low to moderate heat. Tip the garlic and tomatoes together into the oil and stew them gently for about 10-15 minutes until the tomato is breaking down and the garlic has turned translucent.

Meanwhile, top and tail the green beans then put them on to boil. They are ready when they are al dente - about 5 minutes. Drain and set aside until the tomatoes and garlic are ready then toss them through, season to taste and dish up.

Cook's tips: 
It's important not to overheat the frying pan - the garlic especially needs to stew rather than fry - if it starts to caramelise it will add a bitter note to the other ingredients and at that stage it can turn burnt very quickly.

This is a great way to use up leftover vegetables. Overripe tomatoes that are past their best for anything else but not quite beyond use work well here as they will cook down quickly. If you already have some cooked green beans left over in the fridge all you'll need to do is warm them up in the pan with the tomatoes. Even uncooked green beans that are just starting to look a little limp and blotchy can be redeemed this way instead of binned.