British summer does not always require a heatwave to make dinner feel like an overreaction. Sometimes it is enough that the windows are open, the fridge is full of half-used herbs and nobody much fancies a roast, a stew or anything that requires standing solemnly over the hob.
This is the season of a little something: not quite lunch, not quite dinner, but the kind of food people actually want to eat when the evening is warm, the wine is cold and the appetite is more snackish than structured. A dip, something on toast, a crisp salad, a bowl of crisps if we are being honest. Food that can be put in the middle of the table and picked at until, somehow, it becomes a meal.
