Mint Pea Salad

Fresh, zingy and joyfully green, this Mint Pea Salad is as light and fresh as it looks. It makes a great side dish for BBQs and summer Pot Luck Parties. Add a few boiled new potatoes and it makes a nutritious & speedy lunch.

Try this salad with cheesy vegetable pies for or some paneer tikka.

I’ve been making this Mint Pea Salad for many years, but it took an early spring BBQ to remind me to finally get this gem of a salad photographed and published.

As we head into BBQ season I’m hunting down a handful of my favourite recipes that I always like to serve. Alongside all the sausages, burgers and kebabs, I like to pull together a handful of side dishes to keep my plate bursting with fresh ingredients and interesting flavours. I tend to prepare around 4 side dishes per BBQ, but there are 2 recipes I come back to time and time again. Always on the menu are:

• some wonderful pickled onion slices by chef Ben O’Donoghue – these are the crowning glory on any burgers served
• And of course, today’s star recipe, this Mint Pea Salad

Ideal BBQ drinks include an apple & mint cooler, the English Garden cocktail or southern cider.

This salad is so simple to prepare and delivers a fresh, zesty, minty and savoury-sweet addition to the plate. It’s also big on summer produce – alongside the peas the bounty includes:

• Pea shoots or lambs lettuce
• Lots of fresh, bright & aromatic mint
• Dill (optional)
• Radish – for a peppery bite and colour contrast
• A tangy lemon dressing
• Crumbled feta or goats cheese

What’s nice about this dish is that it has only a light dressing, rather than a rich mayonnaise style sauce. The citrus bite of this dressing not only partners superbly with the mint and peas, but it makes a lively pairing with the perky yet creamy bite of the feta or goats cheese as well.

I tend to use frozen peas, fully defrosted, but not cooked for most of the year. But when peas are in season I trot along to my local PYO farm with my kids to pluck a few pea pods fresh from the stem. Nothing quite beats freshly picked and podded peas. Once podded (and taste tested several times over), I blanche the peas and refresh under cold water so they are just cooked and still have that wonderful popping texture that only just harvested peas seem able to retain.

It’s best to prepare the ingredients for this Mint Pea Salad and the dressing separately and combine them together just before serving, since the acidity of the lemon juice does discolour the peas over time, spoiling the bright green aesthetic of this dish.

Finally, should you wish to turn this Mint Pea Salad into a more robust stand-alone salad suitable for lunch, try adding a few boiled new potatoes. Alternatively, make my green bean and potato salad which is loaded with goodies.