A cooling salad that earns its place on the spring table

By the time April and May arrive, the British kitchen starts to lighten. The slow braises and root vegetables that carried us through winter begin to feel heavy, and the first peppery radishes appear in shops and gardens with their bright, grassy leaves still attached. This salad is one of the quickest ways to celebrate them: paper-thin slices of radish and cucumber, tossed in a lemony yogurt dressing sharpened with a little garlic and softened with handfuls of fresh dill.

It is not a demanding recipe, but it is a specific one. Radishes and cucumbers are both full of water, and water is the enemy of a dressing. Get the small details right — the salting, the draining, the temperature of the yogurt — and you will have something distinctly better than the sum of its parts. Served alongside grilled lamb chops, spatchcocked chicken or a piece of oily fish, it cuts through fat and sweetness beautifully. On its own, with warm flatbread, it makes a very good light lunch.

Choosing radishes and cucumbers while they are at their best

British radishes run roughly from April through to September, with the sweetest, crispest specimens arriving in late spring. Smaller ones are almost always better than large ones: once they grow beyond a certain size they turn woody in the middle and aggressively hot. Look for firm roots, unblemished skins and leaves that are perky rather than limp — those leaves are a sign of freshness, and they are edible too.

Varieties to look out for include the classic Cherry Belle, French Breakfast with its elongated pink-and-white root, and the rounder, milder Easter Egg mixes. If you grow your own, pull them young. If you are buying from a farmers' market, ask which are mildest; a good grower will tell you.

For cucumbers, a mini or ridge variety is ideal. These tend to have thinner skins and fewer watery seeds, so they need nothing more than a wipe. A long, waxy supermarket cucumber will need peeling, and it is worth halving it lengthways and scooping out the seed core with a teaspoon, because that centre is where most of the water sits.

Salt first, dress later: the step that keeps everything crisp

This is the bit most people skip, and it is the bit that matters most. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. If you dress unsalted radishes and cucumber in yogurt, that water will find its way into the dressing within twenty minutes and you will end up with a thin, sad puddle.

The method could hardly be simpler:

• Slice 250g of radishes as thinly as you can — a mandoline is ideal, but a sharp knife and a steady hand will do.
• Slice one cucumber, roughly 300g, to a similar thickness.
• Toss both in a colander with 1 teaspoon of fine sea salt and leave for 15 to 20 minutes.
• Shake the colander, then tip the vegetables onto a clean tea towel and pat them dry. Do not rinse them.

What you are left with is seasoned, firmer, more intensely flavoured vegetables that will hold their crunch under the dressing. If you are genuinely short of time, ten minutes of salting is still better than none.

Building the yogurt dressing

Use full-fat natural yogurt. Low-fat versions are thin and often slightly sour in the wrong way, and the fat is what carries the lemon and dill. Greek-style or a thick British strained yogurt gives the richest result, though a looser live yogurt is perfectly good — you simply need less liquid to loosen it later.

For four people, whisk together 200g of yogurt, the finely grated zest and juice of half a lemon, one small garlic clove grated to a paste, 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Taste it. The dressing should be bright and slightly assertive, because the vegetables will dilute it. If it tastes flat, add more lemon; if it is too sharp, a small pinch of sugar will round it off. If it is thicker than you would like, loosen it with a spoonful of cold water or milk.

One small skill worth adopting: take the yogurt out of the fridge ten minutes before you dress the salad. Cold mutes flavour, and a dressing at room temperature tastes noticeably fuller.

Handling dill properly

Dill is delicate and loses its perfume quickly when chopped too far in advance or cooked. Strip the feathery fronds from the thicker stems and chop them roughly with a sharp knife — a blunt blade bruises the herb and turns it dark. Add most of it to the dressing and keep a little back to scatter over the top, where it will stay vivid green and fragrant.

Dried dill is a poor substitute here, though if you must use it, rehydrate a teaspoon in the lemon juice for five minutes before mixing. The stems you remove need not be wasted: they flavour a yogurt marinade for chicken or a quick cucumber pickle beautifully.

Variations and how to serve it

The base recipe is deliberately plain, which makes it a good template. Try any of the following, adding them at the last moment so nothing goes soggy:

• A handful of toasted cumin or nigella seeds scattered over the top.
• Thinly sliced spring onion or a few snipped chives for a gentler allium note.
• Crumbled feta or a spoonful of thick labneh for something more substantial.
• Chopped mint instead of some of the dill, which works particularly well with lamb.
• A few toasted walnuts or flaked almonds for texture.

Serve it cold but not fridge-cold, in a shallow dish rather than a deep bowl, so each spoonful catches dressing and herbs in equal measure. It is at its best within an hour of dressing, though leftovers will keep for a day in the fridge — drain off any liquid that collects before serving. Alongside grilled meat, roast salmon, a baked potato or simply good bread, it is the sort of thing that quietly disappears from the table first, which is the highest compliment a spring salad can be paid.