New Lettuces with Egg and Spring Onions

If you grow your own lettuces, the picking should begin in earnest in May. I expect to eat fresh lettuce almost every day for the next few weeks, then I guess consumption slows down a bit as other vegetables come good in June.

With a bit of luck, the hens are all laying by now, and the spring grass they graze gives an extra orange intensity to their yolks. This simple dish is a seasonal celebration of these simultaneous events in the garden and on the farm – and it’s one to revisit regularly throughout the summer.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2–4 lettuces (ideally a combination of Cos/romaine and butterhead types)
6 eggs
olive oil
vinegar
a pinch of sugar
mustard
5–6 spring onions, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Wash and gently dry the lettuce leaves. Keep the leaves mostly whole but perhaps tear the larger ones in half. Put them in a salad bowl. The eggs should be what I call soft-hard-boiled – i. e. the whites completely set but the yolks just a bit runny in the middle. I achieve this pretty reliably by putting them in a pan of hand-hot water, bringing it quickly to the boil and boiling the eggs for exactly 4 minutes (5 if they are extra large). Then I run them under the cold tap and peel them as soon as they are cool enough to handle. Make a simple vinaigrette by mixing olive oil and vinegar together in a ratio of 5:1, adding a pinch of sugar, a dab of mustard and some salt and pepper and shaking it all up in a jar. Roughly chop the still-warm eggs and put them on top of the lettuce. Scatter the spring onions over the eggs and drizzle the dressing over everything. Serve at once.