Nigel Slater’s recipes for fried new potatoes and rocket mayonnaise, and broad beans with radishes

There was roast chicken, the still warm, lemony juices pooling on the plate; the rustle of fried potatoes with ice-cold cucumber and a smear of mayonnaise, peppery with chopped rocket. An apparently effortless summer lunch, hiding the fact that I had made the mayonnaise by hand – there is no more perfect addition to a summer’s lunch – and scrubbed each and every potato, some of which were barely bigger than a broad bean.

The second salad, served on a platter to be passed around, was one of broad beans, radishes and pecorino, a salad so much the essence of early summer and dressed with appropriate simplicity. I will not complicate these early summer lunches, but instead take painstaking care over the skinning of beans and scrubbing of potatoes or whipping an egg yolk and oil dressing until it shines and stands in proud peaks. Summer tasks as old as the hills.