Broad beans with cream and dill, courgette cakes and panko prawns – Nigel Slater’s early summer recipes

It’s easy to turn a shopping basket full of greens into tasty and easy treats, perfect for sunny days and balmy evenings

I come back from the market with a shopping bag that is entirely green. Bunches of mint and basil; the first peas and young broad beans from Italy; courgettes too. There are bunches of asparagus, lower in price now as the season comes to an end. Those gentle, early season flavours are worth celebrating – some of the asparagus will end up braised in olive oil and vermouth, to be eaten on toast soaked with the cooking juices. The courgettes will be grated and made into little cakes with parmesan and spring onion, and the peas will appear in a vivid green chutney to eat with crumbed and fried prawns.

I think of early summer as the green days in the kitchen, before the arrival of scarlet tomatoes and crimson summer fruits, those first few weeks of glorious sunshine before the real heat hits and all I want to eat is watermelon and feta cheese. These next few weeks are about cheering all that is new and vibrant, a shopping basket of new green shoots, pods and leaves. A time for uncomplicated cooking, of simple flavours, pure and new.