St Patrick's Day

I have a little St. Patrick's day tradition of eating oysters and drinking Guinness as a mini celebration of all things Irish. We drove to Yorkshire at the weekend to go to a party near Huddersfield and on route we stopped off at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a picnic. Knowing that I may not have been able to find oysters and Guinness at a service station on the M1, I had assembled a picnic from ingredients I had purchased from Borough Market the previous afternoon.

I had found an oyster stall selling native oysters at £5 for 15 which is unbelievably cheap. I was a bit dubious at first so had tasted them before making a purchase. They were absolutely delicious, small (no. 5) but creamy and very sweet. So I bought a basket of these and accompanied them with a chorizo and butter bean salad (see below for the recipe), some wedges of lemon, a light rye bread, some juicy kalamata olives, marinated feta and some mini wild boar salami. I love Borough market. We sat at a picnic table in the windy sunshine of the Pennines surrounded by Henry Moores and beautiful trees eating our feast and feeling like kings!

Recipe: Butterbean and Chorizo Salad

I tin butterbeans (or other white bean eg cannellini, harricot), drained and rinsed
4 ripe flavoursome tomatoes, cut into chunks
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
Good bunch of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed to a paste with salt
juice of 1 lemon
1 level tsp smoked sweet paprika (optional)
Olive oil
4 links of cooking chorizo (picante or otherwise), skin removed and broken into small pieces
Salt and pepper

1. Mix the beans, tomatoes, onion and parsley in a salad bowl
2. Make a dressing by combining the crushed garlic with the lemon juice and optional paprika
3. Mix the dressing into the salad
4. Warm the olive oil over the heat and cook the chorizo over a medium heat till crispy round the edges
5. Pour the chorizo and any oil from the pan over the salad
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste and drizzle with a little more oil if liked, toss well and serve.

Delicious with crusty bread, grilled fish or as part of a picnic