Nigel Slater's Recipes for Spring Vegetables and Smoked Trout with Fennel and Onions

Change is in the air. The long greengrocer's table - a scene of endless inspiration - has traded its warm tones of ocher and purple for a leafy green. Sprouting broccoli, spring greens and early wild garlic replaced beets, parsnips and rutabagas. There are pale curly fronds and plump clusters of radishes for breakfast - shopping has a spring in its stride again.

I enjoyed this good and long winter with its slow-cooked bean stews and baking days sprinkled with sugar, but also craving the first days of spring. I want nothing more than snapping crunchy stems and tearing green leaves, tossing them in a pot with a ginger-chilli punch and a lime spritz. I want to shred a pale, crackling salad and toss it with citrus and green herbs and dress it with little tart pickles. And now I can.

I made a refreshing lunch this week with trout fillets with shredded fennel and cucumber tossed with homemade pickled onions. I could have easily used smoked mackerel - exceptionally good with fennel - but the trout has more subtle smoky notes and feels more at home with the bright citrus and slightly vinegary fennel I wanted to dress it with.

Later in the week I came home with a packet of spring greens. Their leaves are less earthy and less bitter than the black-fleshed Savoy and Cavolo Nero that I ate all winter. Their stems are sweet enough to be eaten raw. Grated, seasoned and sautéed, they were on the table within minutes of getting home.

Spring greens, bean sprouts and lime

Crunchy with roasted peanuts and shiny with lime juice, this is a recipe that can be adapted almost endlessly depending on the green vegetables in season. I made a version with gai lan the other day and used roasted cashews instead of peanuts. There's a little prep involved – crushing the garlic and chopping the spring onions and ginger, shredding the spring greens and washing the bean sprouts – but it cooks in a minute or two. You can veganize the recipe by using a vegan substitute for fish sauce. Serves 2

garlic 3 cloves spring onions 2 fresh ginger 50 g hot red peppers 2 bean sprouts 100 sprouted mung beans 100 roasted peanuts 4 tbsp green vegetables 250 gpeanut or vegetable oil 3 tbsp, plus a little extra fish sauce 2 tbsp caster sugar 2 tbsp lime juice 3 tbsp Thai basil leaves a handful of leaves cilantro a handful

Peel the garlic and crush it into a paste. I do this in a pestle and mortar with a pinch of sea salt. Discard the very dark green root and tips of the spring onions, then thinly slice them. Peel and finely grate the ginger into matchsticks. Finely chop the red peppers. Wash bean sprouts and sprouted mung beans and drain in a salad spinner or colander. Roughly chop the peanuts.

Wash the spring greens. Lay the leaves on top of each other and roll them tightly. Then cut them into strips the thickness of a finger, like pappardelle.

Heat the oil in a wok. When hot, add the garlic, spring onions and ginger and sauté them, stirring them quickly in the pan for a minute or two, then add the chiles. Fry for another minute or so, until very lightly colored, then remove everything from the pan with a spoon or a spider.

Add a little oil to the pan and, when hot, add the bean sprouts and mung beans quickly followed by the grated greens. Add the peanuts, fish sauce and caster sugar, then return the herbs to the pan. Toss everything in the pan, stirring and frying, then finish with lime juice and Thai basil and, if desired, cilantro leaves.

Smoked trout, fennel and sour onions- soft