There are summer recipes that require you to stand over a hot stove, and there are those that understand the assignment. Erchen Chang’s are firmly in the latter camp: cold noodles slicked with a garlicky tomato dressing, cucumber smashed into craggy pieces so it catches every drop of chilli oil and spinach barely introduced to boiling water before being drenched in a sharp, creamy tofu sauce.
Chang, one of the minds behind London’s BAO restaurants, has always had a knack for food that looks deceptively simple. Here, much of the work is in getting the small things right: tomatoes should be properly ripe and, importantly, never refrigerated; cucumber is salted until it loses enough water to become exceptionally crunchy; the spinach dressing needs the grassy bitterness of good olive oil against soy, sesame and lemon.
