I’m not designed for this weather, London is scorching and I am melting. I don’t even have a week’s worth of summer clothes and my salad repertoire is sorely lacking. This has been exacerbated by the fact that I can’t bear to turn on the oven, as my flat is already hotter than the fires of hell.

Fortunately, I do have one go-to salad that I can’t get enough of. (Pardon my grammar, but I just couldn’t make that sentence sound right!) On the downside it does involve turning on a grill, but if you’re one of those lucky people with some outside space, a BBQ and someone who actually has a clue how to light it, you can get around that.

Alternatively, get a trusty tin of sweetcorn, I’m sure it would work here, but you’ll miss out on the charred flavour and the salad might lose some of its fresh vibrancy. If you can persuade yourself to put the grill on, I promise it’ll be worth your while!

The dressing is what really makes this salad. It’s packed full of amazing flavours, fresh ginger, honey and lime. It’s also fantastic with a bit of crushed garlic, but I find the flavour lingers a little too long for me and I’m always a little paranoid that I’ll still be stinky the following morning at work, despite excessive use of mouthwash.

As my recipes always seem to be, this is a hugely flexible dish. Avocado is utterly awesome here and if my local supermarket wasn’t so unreliable it definitely would have been present. You can also substitute the coriander for parsley or any other fresh herb that takes your fancy. Basically add in or take out whatever you like but please, please, please try the dressing!

Charred Sweetcorn Salad
Adapted from Shutterbean
2-4 servings

Ingredients:

2 cobs of sweetcorn
4 spring onions
1 yellow pepper
A handful of cherry tomatoes
A handful of coriander
1/2 a red chilli

For the dressing:
1-2cm of grated root ginger
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp rapeseed oil (or olive oil)
1 clove crushed garlic (optional)
Salt & pepper

Put the grill on medium, grill the sweetcorn on all sides until golden and then put it to one side to cool until easy to handle.

In the meantime, make the dressing. Pop all of the dressing ingredients into a jam jar and shake until fully combined, easy!

Use a sharp knife to cut the kernels off the corn cobs. I tend to do this over a shallow bowl as it seems to minimise the mess. I’m all about minimising mess.

Put the sweetcorn into a large salad bowl with the dressing and give it a good mix. Now finely chop the pepper, spring onions and chilli and add them to the bowl. Halve the tomatoes and finely chop the coriander, chuck them in, stir it up and you’re done!

Enjoy, but don’t make my mistake of roasting new potatoes in this weather!