Bloody Mary Salad

The boy generally prefers a salad to a cooked vegetable side dish. We’re having this with some cold thick sliced smoked turkey. It would be nice with cooked cold king prawns too.

300g cucumber

300g celery

200g cooked chestnuts

1x400g can good quality chopped tomatoes

2tbsp Oloroso sherry

2tbsp Worcestershire sauce

3tbsp grated fresh horseradish

2tsp celery salt

3tbsp olive oil

6 sprigs parsley

The boy has dug up a piece of horseradish root from the garden though that is the extent to his involvement. It is presented to me mud-on, to be cleaned, peeled and grated. There is no way to grate horseradish that will not make you cry.

Peel the cucumber and cut it in half lengthways. Run a teaspoon down the centre to remove the seeds and their watery membrane.

Run a vegetable peeler down the celery stalks to remove stringy bits. Chop the celery and cucumber into quite small pieces.

Warm the chestnuts in a dry pan until they start to smell like chestnuts. Ours come from a vacuum pack. Once they start to smell good, crumble them into the cucumber-celery mix.

Put the tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, sherry, selery salt and olive oil into a blender and get it smooth. Do use decent tomatoes – this will just be watery if you don’t. Oloroso is a dark, dry, nutty sherry, though be careful. Though sweet versions are not supposed to be labelled thus, you will find blends labelled Oloroso, so do check that it will be nice and dry.

I can’t resist adding a small dash of Tabasco and a pinch of black pepper to the blender.

Once you have a thick dressing toss with the vegetables. You can afford a lot of dressing – much more than you would have if it was a vinaigrette.

I like to serve it in wide, deep tumblers rather than bowls. Sprinkle the parsley on top. Flat leaf if you can get it.