JamieOliver.com

You may be thinking that winter and salads don’t go together, but let me tell you... they do! There’s no reason why winter salads can’t be exciting. Recently I found myself in my garden on a very rainy, windy day, with floods happening just down the road and trees getting blown over (including one of mine). I didn’t expect to see much that I could use in a salad, but when I stopped to have a little look at what was in the ground ready to be eaten there was actually quite a lot of good stuff there! Normally, in the UK, we’d be having cold winters and regular frosts, but as it’s been fairly warm over the past few years, the changes have really shown up in the garden in terms of which plants have benefited and continued growing.


If you want to brighten up your garden a bit in the winter and keep it ticking along, there are loads of different things you can plant. Funnily enough, the exciting things that do really well in colder weather are those plants from Mediterranean or Asian climates. Things like Italian rocket and radicchio, dandelions and chicories, through to Asian mustards and cresses, moulis and radishes. All very exciting stuff. There are also some British-style leaves like sprouting cabbage and baby broccoli shoots, yellow celery leaves and chervil that will all be there in some shape or form on the plants during winter. Even though some of these little shoots and leaves may come from the cabbage family, if used when small enough they’re delicious in salads because they taste more like a salad leaf than a vegetable. If you have any of these things in your garden during the winter you won’t need to venture near a shop for salad ingredients. I’ve even picked rocket in the snow and it was good as gold!

I think salads during winter should be about mixing things up a bit. You could definitely slice up some root vegetables that you stored away in the summer, and serve them with the big, bold, unconventional and exciting sauce on page 373 (an absolute show-stopper!). Or buy whatever’s in season and simply dress your winter leaves. It’s all good! Winter leaves can often be bitter – things like dandelion, Treviso, chicory – and this has to be balanced with thick balsamic vinegar, crispy smoked bacon, a garlicky dressing or a creamy one. Another recipe in this chapter is a roasted carrot and avocado salad with winter leaves – admittedly, avocados aren’t grown in the UK, but they are two a penny in the shops. To serve them alongside roast carrots with lovely dressed winter leaves and nutty seeds is a delight, and it will put a bit of spice back into those dark winter evenings!

I know it’s sometimes easy to get stuck in a rut, making the same old salad and never feeling inspired to try something new, no matter what time of year. If that’s how you feel, and if you only ever eat salad in summer, you’re probably reading this thinking there’s no point in trying to grow any winter salad leaves. But when it’s as easy as snipping open a £1 packet of seeds and quickly sowing them in a pot and leaving it on your windowsill, you’ll find it’s addictive and you’ll get right into growing some leaves, no matter how old you are or how stuck in a rut you might be! When I first moved to London I was living in a studio flat and my windowboxes were filled with herbs. As I didn’t have any room for salad leaves as well, I’d go and sprinkle salad seeds, rocket and wild fennel in a quiet spot in my local park, then I’d keep an eye on them and go back and pick them when they were ready! There’s a very fine line between salad leaves and weeds. For instance, rocket is essentially a weed. Sometimes it will flower and go to seed but to be honest, if I went back to that spot in the park today there would still be some rocket growing there. Fennel seeds itself year after year as well. So go and have a little sprinkle and you’ll be knocking up some lovely salads in no time!

How I grow winter salads
Soil
Most winter salads can be sown directly into the soil from mid-summer to early autumn. This gives them some warm weather to grow before things slow down for the winter. Pick a well-drained spot in the garden that’s sheltered and sunny. The soil needs to be prepared by adding a little well-rotted organic compost and a few handfuls of an organic fertilizer per square metre. Mix well and rake out lumpy bits.

Planting and sowing
Although winter salads can be sown directly outside, there are a few types – radicchio and winter radish in particular – that I normally start off indoors in little pots or module trays. This method gives me big, strong plants that I can either cut or pull up whole. I normally sow them in July and plant them outside during August and September. After that it will take them about three months to grow to full size.

To sow outside all you need to do is smooth over the surface of your prepared soil and make little furrows about 2cm deep. Space the furrows about 15 to 20cm apart. Sprinkle your salad seeds into each furrow, cover with 1 to 2cm of soil and carefully water them. Don’t forget to label each variety!

Harvesting
Many winter salads can be harvested a little at a time by simply cutting a few leaves from each plant. This will enable you to ‘cut and come again’ without weakening individual plants too much. Large heads of radicchio, however, can be cut completely and they will grow new baby shoots again. Only harvest what you need each time. Winter salads usually store best by leaving them growing outside... saves room in your fridge too!

My growing tips
• Give winter salad leaves a better chance of surviving cold weather by protecting them with cloches or garden fleece.

• Winter salad leaves can be easily grown in pots or growbags. Put them in the warmest, sunniest spot in the garden. If you have a greenhouse or polytunnel, even if it’s unheated, you’ll be amazed at how well they’ll crop.

• A lot of the winter salad leaves look very ornamental and are great planted in tubs as a bit of a feature. It’s a bonus that you can eat them!