Asparagus and beetroot, and new potatoes with blue cheese: Alice Hart’s spring salads – recipes

Welcome summer with smashed new potatoes, blue cheese and chicory, and a salad of shaved asparagus, beetroot, fennel and wild rice

Thoughtful veg prep and bold, herb-spiked dressings are your friends when swerving dull salads. A wide, swivel-style peeler and a basic mandoline will make any paper-thin slicing of spring veg effortless. Think smashed spuds bolstered by stilton and tumbled through cool chicory and radish. Or delicate ribbons of raw asparagus, beet and fennel, which will begin to pickle, pleasingly so, in their sweet-sharp, mustard dressing to hail the summer’s salad days.

UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado

UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado

Recipes extracted from The Magnificent Book of Vegetables: Eat a Rainbow Every Day by Alice Hart, published on 26 May by Wellbeck Publishing at £26. To order a copy for £22.62, go to guardianbookshop.com.

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