T here is a deep bowl of cream cheese in the fridge. Pale green and freckled with grated cucumber and salty little cornichons, it is the very essence of early summer. It rests, waiting for a batch of nigella-speckled flatbreads to come from the stove.
The dough for the flatbreads takes 10 minutes to make, an hour to prove, and 10 minutes to bake. Most of the work is done by the dough rather than the cook. The dough won’t meet the heat of the pan until we begin to eat, so everyone gets to handle the warm bread and spread it with the chilled cucumber pâté, curls of smoked salmon and shelled prawns.
It’s a useful thing to have around on a summer’s day, for stuffing wraps and filling soft, floury baps, but also a piquant accompaniment – an impromptu sauce – for grilled aubergines, courgettes or tomatoes. I use it with grilled lamb cutlets, letting the creamy pâté slowly melt over the sizzling meat. There are a few young strawberries around and they are most welcome.
If the flavour of the early fruit is less intense than you might hope, cut each one in half and add a scattering of caster sugar and a drop or two of balsamic vinegar. Toss the fruit gently and set aside for half an hour. The flavour will shine more brightly.
Early in the season, I like to go further still and make a marinade of citrus juice and balsamic vinegar, making the berries taste as if they have ripened in deepest summer. Cucumber, mint and cornichon pâté with nigella flatbreads The soft .
