Here we are, we have made it to the second section of the Brave New Meal cookbook: Soups and Salads!

First, is this asparagus and chive salad. This is a very simple salad with greens, asparagus, chives and toasted almonds. Before this, I had never tried raw asparagus and I wasn’t even sure it could be eaten this way. But I must say, it was so delicious! It’s so crunchy and a little sweet.

I made this just for myself so I scaled the recipe down to make it for a single serving. The preparation of the asparagus – shaving it with a peeler – was quite fun to do. I am very glad I only had to shave about 7-8 spears though because it was a little time consuming and I can’t imagine having done any more. But it looked very pretty in the salad so I’m glad I did it.

The dressing was just olive oil, lemon juice and garlic, plus salt and pepper. Everything was nice and fresh and very brightly flavoured.

This was a surprisingly good salad. Because it is so minimal with ingredients and the dressing, I didn’t think I would enjoy it too much but I loved this! The greens and asparagus are so crunchy and the chives have a nice mild onion flavour. But the key here is the toasted almonds, with the nuttiness and extra texture.

This was a very good start to the Soups and Salads section of the cookbook and I am thrilled with the book as a whole thus far!