Simple Green Salad

Pull the leaves away from the base of each head, keeping the small ones whole and tearing anything bigger than your palm into two or three pieces.

Wash them in a sink of cold water, lifting them out with your hands so the grit stays behind at the bottom.

Spin them dry two handfuls at a time. A packed spinner only presses the water off one leaf and onto the next.

Lay the spun leaves out on a clean tea towel and blot off whatever beads are left, until nothing wets your fingers.

Get them properly dry before anything else happens. Dressing will not cling to a wet leaf — it slides straight off, thins as it goes and pools in the base of the bowl, so you end up eating bare leaves over a puddle.

Pile the dry leaves loosely into a wide bowl.

Scatter the picked herb leaves through them.

Leave the bowl undressed until everyone is sitting down.

Dress it in the last minute before it is eaten, and not a moment earlier. Salt and acid start pulling water out of a leaf on contact, and a salad dressed even ten minutes ahead has slumped to half its volume and gone limp by the time it reaches the table.

Shake the vinaigrette hard, until it is thick and opaque rather than sitting in two layers.

Pour 2 tbsp of it down the inside wall of the bowl rather than over the leaves, so none of it lands in one heavy patch.

Turn the salad with your hands, or two wide spoons, lifting from the base and folding the leaves over for about 20 seconds.

Look at the leaves in the light. They should glisten faintly at the edges, with nothing running down to the bottom of the bowl.

Add the last tablespoon only if some leaves are still dull and dry. Leaves should shine rather than swim, and an over-dressed salad collapses just as fast as an early-dressed one.

Season with the ground peppercorns and a pinch of flaky salt.

Take it to the table straight away, next to the roast chicken with lemon and thyme or anything else rich enough to need cutting through.