Nigel Slater's Recipes for Cucumber, Avocado and Basil Tabbouleh and Honey Panna Cotta

It can be really useful to have a summer salad up your sleeve that's both light enough for summer but also substantial - the kind you could bring with a plate of marinated mozzarella or burrata, a summer terrine of salmon trimmings or maybe a few thick, shredded pieces of roast chicken picked from its bones. A salad that can be kept all night if necessary, and whose presence on the table is unlikely to break the bank.

A tabbouleh with green herbs makes the deal: a few handfuls of grain mixed with twice its volume of very finely chopped parsley, a fistful of mint, spring onions and lots of lemon, then a few surprises in the form of neat cubes of avocado and large leaves of peppery basil. When summer is at its peak, I'll also include diced cucumber for an extra kick of freshness and bring it to the table with a bowl of crispy, cold lettuce leaves that I've soaked in water. frozen, with which to pick it up.

We ate such a calm and sweet salad on Sunday afternoon, followed by a plate of flat white peaches that smelled of rose petals and little jars of panna cotta, almost too soft to turn. The dessert, set in pale green and white jars, was sweetened with honey and seemed in tune with this, the quietest lunch of the season, eaten in the presence of the slow bees in the nasturtiums. Bees almost too big to fly.

My kitchen has been particularly serene this week, with the cook moving at a somewhat icy pace from fridge to stove. This long summer, with its endless breakfasts in the garden and its overabundance of burrata lunches, got the better of me.

I turned on the oven once only once, to roast a chicken to be eaten cold. I made her a nice butter with chopped tarragon and lemon thyme, a pinch of fennel seeds and a few pearls of dried lavender, which I then gently weeded under her skin with my fingertips.

Cucumber, avocado and basil tabbouleh

Although I don't make it more than an hour or two before eating - lest the avocado brown - it will happily survive a night in refrigerator if well covered. (We took it on a picnic in Wales and it traveled better than most salads I've experienced.) The trick, as always with tabbouleh, is to make it with more herbs than cereals and do not hesitate with lemon juice.

For 4-6 people

fine bulgur 100g spring onions 3cucumber 250gparsley 80g (weight with stems) basil leaves 25gmint leaves 12, medium green olives 75g, pitted lemon 1avocado 2, medium olive oil 5tbsp

Place the thin bulgur in a small bowl, then pour enough cold water over it to cover it by 1 cm, and leave to stand for 20 minutes while you assemble the salad.

Finely chop the spring onions and put them in a mixing bowl. Peel the cucumber, halve it lengthwise, then scoop out the wet core and seeds with a teaspoon. Cut the cucumber into small cubes and add them to the spring onions.

Remove the parsley leaves from their stems and chop them finely, then mix them with the spring onions and basil and mint leaves. (You can grate the basil if you like, but I prefer to leave the leaves whole, unless they're particularly large.)

Roughly chop the green olives, then add them to the cucumber, onions and herbs. Cut the avocados in half and squeeze them into the salad.

Cut the avocados in half, remove and discard the pits, cut the fruit into quarters, then peel and remove the skin. Cut the flesh into small cubes and mix delicately, taking care not to crush it, with the other ingredients.

Pour a drizzle of olive oil, then add the drained bulgur and mix everything together gently before piling it on a serving platter.

Honey panna cotta