Nigel Slater’s green vegetable crumble, and cucumber, microgreens and wasabi salad

These days of early summer with crisp young greens at the market and the garden fizzing with new growth are glorious. This week, I stuffed great handfuls of spinach – thick stemmed, leaves as pointed as an arrow – into a deep saucepan, letting them cook for a minute or two in their own steam, then tossed them with young broad beans into a classic, aromatic white sauce. The filling was then covered with a rubble of butter crumbs and baked until the green-freckled sauce bubbled up around the edges and the crumble was lightly crisp.

Deeper into summer, I will make this recipe with lightly cooked runner beans and shredded summer cabbage. Blanched asparagus may go in, too, especially now the price of homegrown spears has come down. The crucial point is to make a seriously good sauce, using cloves, bay leaves and onion, but also to give your sauce the baptism of time. A béchamel, thoughtfully seasoned and given a good 25 minutes or longer over a very low heat with scarcely a bubble to be heard, is a cook’s time well spent.