Del-icious!: My first harvest of the season

The success I'm having this year with growing things is truly unprecedented. Previously trying to cultivate vegetables and flowers on a tiny shady balcony makes me feel sad now. I tried so hard and had a few little triumphs, but now I know I was doing everything wrong. Light, sun, good soil...today I have all these things and my veg are thriving. The vegetable plot, (see below), contains 4 types of basil, 5 types of tomato, spinach, fennel, shiso leaves, broccoli, gai lan, chili peppers, nasturtiums, chives, beets, radish and eggplant. When I say radish I mean singular radish. I obviously haven't improved enough as a gardener yet as I planted one radish seed and got a beauty, but that's it, no more radish for us this Summer.

Obviously there's not much you can do with one radish, other than simply slicing it finely and using it to garnish a salad. I did have grand plans to serve it with a piece of bread, butter and salt, but, like everything else these days, that just seemed like too much effort. (Funny, seeing as the salad probably took three times as long).

The salad I made had to be a good one, a vehicle for the radish if you want to get posh, so some asparagus and mushrooms were fried with red chili pesto and a little harissa paste and some nasturtiums from the garden also added to make it pretty enough.

Recipe : Asparagus and mushroom salad with radish

1 tbsp oil and 1 tsp butter

6 asparagus stalks, snapped free of woody end

6 mushrooms, finely sliced

1 tbsp chili pepper or any type of pesto

2 tsp harissa paste

1 cup salad leaves

1/4 apple, finely sliced

1/4 cucumber, finely sliced

1 tbsp each finely chopped fresh dill and mint

a few nasturtium leaves and shredded flowers

1 radish, finely sliced

a little salt

Heat the oil and butter in a frying pan over medium to high heat and add the asparagus and mushrooms. Fry until the mushrooms have softened and then add the pesto and harissa, stirring well. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl, letting them cool for a while. Add all other ingredients except the radish and mix well to allow the oil, butter, pesto and harissa to dress all the ingredients. Garnish with the radish and enjoy.