Do you like salad? You're a fool

Do you like salad? You’re a fool. Not because bacon is better (although, of course, it is) but because salad vegetables are nutrition-lite, resource-guzzling, pseudo-healthy food crimes that enable the overconsumption of blue cheese dressing. If they aren’t bringing foodborne diseases to your table, they are being chucked, soggily, into the bin. Tamar Haspel, the Washington Post’s food columnist, made properly considered and intelligent versions of all these points yesterday, leading us to wonder what life would be like if we, as she suggests, started to think of salad as a resource-hungry luxury, rather than a wholesome staple.

Fresh salad greens aren’t always as fabulous as they might seem. Photograph: Kevin Summers

We have a joke in our house. We ask the five-year-old what his favourite food is. He shouts “SALAD” loud enough to frighten the frisee, we all laugh heartily and then I crack open a bag of Starmix and sprinkle them affectionately on his dinner plate. Do you really love lettuce (a definition that we will extend to include leafy greens that are commonly eaten raw, in salad-style situations)? Would you mourn a shift in its status that led to consumption only on high days and holidays, on a level with the nice smoked salmon, hand-churned butter you can only buy from a unique Swede, and hens’ teeth? If so, I would wager you are in one of the following circumstances.

One: You really like watercress, served in a 90s fashion with seared salmon and blistered roast tomatoes. Simon Hopkinson lives in your house and, thanks to his well-documented perfectionism, insists on plucking the leaves from the long, tough stalks before “service”.

Two: your lettuce-buying habits are limited to the classic English round lettuce, which is available for substantially less than £1, lasts ages in the fridge and is soft and buttery and lovely. You find preparing it to be a soothing, summery ritual, and the leaves are extremely handy when you can’t be bothered to do all the veg with a roast chicken.

Three: you are Darina Allen, and live and teach cookery on an organic farm where a team of gardeners ensure a constant supply of gorgeously fresh and characterful leaves which all taste precisely of themselves; some spicy, some earthy, some delicate. A legion of cookery students gently wash and dry bundles of fresh leaves every day and serve them with lunch in a big wooden salad bowl, carefully dressed with a vinaigrette of your own devising.

The problems that occur when any back garden food is mass-produced and supplied though supermarkets seem to be exacerbated when it comes to salad. Haspel is not the first to point out why fresh salad greens aren’t as fabulous as they might seem: bagged versions have been deconstructed many times over by investigative food writers, including Felicity Lawrence and Joanna Blythman. The major issues are water-hungry production, the means of preparation, washing and packaging, resources used during transport and cold storage and the likelihood that, after all that, some of it is going to end up in the bin. According to sustainability group Wrap, in 2012 lettuce accounted for £270m of avoidable food waste, while leafy salad accounted for £150m. It’s difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about bagged salad, unless they’re a grower or retailer of bagged salad.

Salad leaves are apparently very easy to raise at home, and if salad is going to be a luxury, more of us might consider having a grow under the guidance of an expert such as Dan Pearson. Bought herbs share many of the drawbacks common to salads, and Pip McCormac’s The Herb & Flower Cookbook will see you right for ideas in both the production and eating departments. But if you really couldn’t grow, buy or steal the glacial wedge of iceberg, dark baby spinach or unpleasantly beetroot-flecked bistro salad that constitutes your habitual dalliance with salad greens, would you miss it? What would you serve instead?

Blackcurrant buns recipes

Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin

Eccles cakes of sorts, but with fresh blackcurrants instead of the usual dried fruit filling. You could use puff pastry for these if the mood takes you. The cream-cheese pastry is my version of an idea from the wonderful Dan Lepard.

Makes 6
For the cream-cheese pastry
plain flour 250g
baking powder ½ tsp
butter 75g
full-fat cream cheese 75g
egg 1
beaten egg 1, for brushing

For the filling
blackcurrants 225g
caster sugar 3 tbsp
double cream to serve

Put the flour and baking powder and a good pinch of salt into a large mixing bowl, then add the butter, cut into small dice, and the cream cheese and rub the ingredients together with your fingertips until they resemble coarse, fresh breadcrumbs.

Beat the egg, then fold into the mixture, bringing the dough together and then into a ball with your hands. Wrap in greaseproof paper or clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6.

Toss together the blackcurrants and caster sugar in a mixing bowl. Divide the dough into six and roll each piece out into a thin 16cm disc. Place one of the pieces of pastry on a baking sheet, then spoon a sixth of the blackcurrant and sugar filling in the centre. Brush the rim of the pastry with beaten egg then pull the edges in to the middle and press tightly together to seal. Turn the bun upside down, push it into a neat round and brush with a little more beaten egg. Make three small slashes in the top. Dust with caster sugar.

Continue with the rest of the pastry and currants to make 6 flat buns. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden. Serve warm, not cold, with double cream.

Mitch Tonks: roast red sea bream, artichokes, tomatoes and verdicchio

Selin Kiazim’s marinated aubergine, candied aubergine puree, bitter leaves and smoked almonds: ‘Summer brings the chance to experiment with all that gorgeous seasonal fruit and veg.’ Photograph: Rob White. Food styling: Cara Hobday

Lunches are long in our house. We’ll kick off with a magnum of rosé, and all the wines will be planned in advance – after all, what you drink with a meal is almost as important as the food. A few anchovies, or a crab, or some burrata will be our antipasti, there’ll be some sort of pasta as a middle course – Giorgio’s mullet dish would fit the bill nicely – and for main we’ll share a whole fish. We live right next to the fish market in Brixham, so are lucky to have the pick of the best. We’ll finish with cheese and fruit, then roll into coffee and spirits, with the table thinning out as we hit the sofa one by one, marking the end of another great meal in the company of the people I love most. Serves four.

Olive oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced fine
1 white onion, peeled and finely sliced
8 small artichokes, cleaned and taken down to the heart
4 very ripe tomatoes
300ml dry white wine (verdicchio for preference)
Salt and pepper
2 x 700-900g red sea bream, scaled and gutted
2 lemons

Pour a few glugs of olive oil into a roasting tin, heat on the hob, then add the garlic and onion, and cook for a few minutes, until softened. Add the artichokes and tomatoes, and cook gently for two or three minutes, then pour in the wine, boil off the alcohol, taste and season accordingly.

Lay the fish on top of the veg and roast in a hot oven (220C/425F/gas mark 7) for 35 minutes. Transfer the fish to a serving platter, and stir the vegetables – they should be nicely browned by now. Season and squeeze over lemon juice to taste. Stir to mix: the sauce should be quite thick and emulsified; if not, add a splash of water. Spoon the sauce and veg around the fish and serve.

• Mitch Tonks is chef/co-owner of The Seahorse in Dartmouth, Devon, and the Rockfish restaurants. His latest book, The Seahorse, co-written with Mat Prowse, is published by Absolute Press at £25. To order a copy for £20, go to bookshop.theguardian.com.

Fiona Beckett’s wine matches If you’re using verdicchio in a recipe, you might want to lay in an extra bottle to drink with it. The Classico dei Castelli di Jesi 2014 (£8, Asda, and often on promotion; 12.5% abv) is a reliable favourite. Morrisons does a good one, too. And if you want to go down Mitch’s route of starting with a magnum of rosé, your best bet is Majestic: at £19.99, the Côteaux d’Aix en Provence 2014 (12.5% abv) is the best deal.