CHOP YOUR SALAD.

No salad should be safe from a sharp knife and a chopping board.

A salad you can eat with a spoon? Yes please.

If you’re talking cucumber, tomato, radish and friends, then you want all that bright, crunchy freshness in your mouth at the one time. And the only way to do that - without being gross - is to chop them into small pieces of similar size.

So here’s a base recipe to get you started.

CHOPPED SALAD.

• Half cucumber, unpeeled

• 2 tomatoes, diced

• Half red onion, finely diced or sliced

• 4 crisp radish, diced

• Half red capsicum, diced

• 1 tbsp chopped dill

• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

• Half teaspoon dried mint or oregano

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 2 tbsp lemon juice

• Sea salt and pepper

Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise and use a teaspoon to scrape out the seeds. Cut into 1 cm dice.

Toss together the cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, radish, capsicum, dill, parsley, and dried mint.

Whisk olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt and pepper, pour over the salad and toss with your hands. It should taste bright and sharp and lemony.

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The chef who made the salad that inspired me to go home and chop everything in sight is Ibrahim Kasif from Sydney’s fun new manoush-fuelled Beau and Dough.

He told me he could eat this salad every day. Which I had just said out loud to the room in general. Which EVERYONE says when they eat this salad.

When I asked him for his special cheffy secret dressing, he laughed out loud. “Lemon juice and olive oil.”  Ha! People put all sorts of shit into salad dressings, but lemon juice and olive oil, we agreed, can’t be beat.

GO CRAZY WITH IT.

Take your favourite salad, and chop it. Then throw in a can of lentils or chickpeas. Rocket is beautiful strewn through a chopped salad. Pomegranate arils, pomegranate molasses, sumac, cumin, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, all good.

Swap the red onion for shallots or spring onions; the red capsicum for the longer red romano or bullhorn pepper. Add a spoonful of Turkish red pepper paste (biber salcasi) for heat. And if you make the salad even ten minutes ahead, drain off most of the collected juices before serving. Juiciness is good, swimming is not.

Here’s a Greekish one to keep you going, studded with feta, tomato, watermelon, radish, red pepper and red onion.

And I’m not sure if you’ve seen a Cobb salad in real life, but it’s quite hysterical. This classic American chopped salad was created by the owner of Los Angeles’ long-gone Brown Derby restaurant in 1937 from left-over ingredients  – bacon, tomato, chicken, avocado, hard-boiled egg, chives, watercress, lettuce and blue cheese. It’s sent out with each ingredient lined up as if at school assembly, ready for the diner to mix and match.

The key is that you can eat it all with a fork and not have to cut everything up. Here’s my Cobb salad recipe on Good Food. I have no patience for such segregation any more, but if you happen to think a tossed salad is icky - all that mingling - then just group the ingredients as shown in my prep shot here.

The inspiration for this salad being essentially Turkish, I send silent thanks to everyone who is trying so hard to help the people of Türkiye and Syria after the earthquakes. I can’t do much more than send money and love, but if you make this salad for your family, consider doing the same.

Thanks also to Terry for putting up with chopped salads three nights in a row, even if they were served with Terry-like things such as sausages, kofta and grilled fish.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.