Sezonnyi Salat (сезонний салат, summer garden salad)

The first sound is not chopping. It is cucumber splitting under your hands, tomato skin giving way, dill stems snapping, and suddenly the bowl smells like the garden has walked itself to the table. This is the litnya kuhnia, the summer kitchen, in its fastest form: no stove, no waiting, just what is ripe and loud enough to eat now.

In the Kherson steppe, this plate appears beside almost everything from June until the tomatoes give up. You tear or cut the vegetables over the bowl because the juice is part of the dressing, then drown them in dill and unrefined sunflower oil, green-gold and nutty, Ukraine in a bottle of oil. Aunt Nadia wrote only, "salt before serving," and she was right. Salt too early and the salad floods itself before anyone sits down.

Use what is good today. Radishes if they are crisp, spring onion if it bites back, a spoon of smetana if you want it softer. The only real rule is this: keep the juices in the bowl.