Broad Bean and Pea Salad with Mint and Lemon

June is the month this salad belongs to. The broad beans come in thick and fast, the pods fat and furry, and the peas a week or two behind them. Everything is green. The garden smells of warm earth and cut grass, and the kitchen window is open because for once the weather has remembered it's supposed to be summer.

Double-podding broad beans takes a little time. Not much, and you shouldn't begrudge it. You split the outer pod, blanch the beans briefly, then slip each one out of its grey jacket to reveal the bright, almost luminous green inside. The transformation is the whole point. What was dull and slightly bitter becomes sweet and tender, the colour of something that was growing in the ground an hour ago. This is the step that separates a good broad bean salad from a forgettable one.

The peas want almost nothing done to them. A minute in boiling water, or less if they're fresh from the pod and still warm from the sun. Mint, torn by hand. Lemon. Good olive oil, enough that it pools in the bottom of the bowl. Season and taste. Then taste again.

This is the sort of thing I put in front of people on a warm evening when the table is outside and nobody is in a hurry. It sits alongside grilled lamb or a piece of fish, or it sits on its own with bread and that's enough. I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made it: broad beans, peas, mint, lemon, the garden. Some recipes don't need more than a few words because the ingredients are the whole story.