Pea puree

My sister-in-law Kirsty and her family produced a delicious lunch on Sunday for Matilda's christening: a summer's cold buffet for a really hot spring day - cold salmon, ham, a delicious lentil salad, pink fir apples with chopped herbs. The bruschetta were particularly fine, striking and very pretty as you can see, with their strongly contrasting colours. The black ones were an olive tapenade, which you can easily buy in a jar in most supermarkets. The green ones were very moreish - peas, with garlic and butter.

Here's the recipe for my version:

Boil a couple of handfuls of frozen peas with one fat clove of garlic (peeled). When the peas are tender, drain them, and whizz to a puree (a hand blender is ideal for the small quantities here, but if you were making enough for a crowd, then the liquidiser would be better). Mix in one tablespoon of 0% Greek yoghurt, and serve on little toasts. You could also flavour this with mint, in which case, put one or two raw leaves into the whizzer.

Kirsty often makes the lentil salad, and it's wonderful: puy lentils, mixed through with a few sun-dried tomatoes which have been soaked in olive oil, and some little torn pieces of ricotta. This is all dressed in a vinaigrette, with chopped herbs strewn over the top. It would make a good light lunch all by itself.

Fantastic puddings, especially Emily's richly chocolate-y brownies, at least, those few not stolen by Coco, the black not-quite labrador (but labrador enough to be a well known food thief!).

My first photograph shows us walking through the field to the church, little Cecily running to catch up. The second shows Matilda with her parents Susie and Nat, and the vicar, my newly-discovered cousin Robin Ewbank.