Lemon and garlic potato salad.

Potato salads don't necessarily have the best reputation. Bland, claggy with mayonnaise and often featuring mysteriously undercooked potatoes: I don't think I have ever had a shop-bought one that approached edible. But a good potato salad is a thing of beauty. It was a no-brainer for the Glyndebourne picnic: the only question was how to flavour it.

As the two and a half bulbs of garlic I had braised with the ham had softened to a tasty but decidedly mellow flavour, I was determined to increase the garlic quota to "a bit indecent", if not quite the "shameless" levels recommended by Niki Segnit in The Flavour Thesaurus.

I love lemon juice with new potatoes: the acidity both cuts through both the creaminess of the flesh and provides a foil to whatever fat has been chosen to dress the potatoes. I sometimes use a vinegar for the same effect, but with the vinegar in both the pickled cucumber and coleslaw accompanying the ham I did not want to bring any more to the plate.

With all the other flavours going into the meal, I also didn't want to add a whole new dimension with herbs. Lots of finely-chopped, fresh, flat leaf parsley would complement the lemon and garlic and bring a zingy green to the potatoes (which, if I'm honest, I think of as parsley's main function in most dishes).

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I put the new potatoes on to boil in salted water, and fried a bulb's worth of medium-chopped garlic until golden. Some bits went a little crispy, but I knew they would soften in the dressing. I picked the leaves from around two-thirds of a 100g bunch of parsley and chopped them finely. I combined this with lemon juice and extra virgin rapeseed oil (silkiness without the olive taste). I then added less than a tablespoon of mayonnaise - just enough to help the oil and lemon juice to form a more stable emulsion than a standard vinaigrette - and whisked it all together.

I did not add salt at this stage as cooking the potatoes in salted water would go some way towards seasoning them, and I needed to taste the dressing with the potato before knowing how much, if any, salt would be needed.

When the potatoes were cooked and cool enough to handle I slipped them from their skins and cut them into bitesize chunks. I would not do this for an everyday meal, and to be frank about 20 potatoes in I was regretting the decision. But at that point I was committed, and they did look prettier than they would have done otherwise.

As each potato was finished I threw it into the oil mixture and coated it, so that the potato starch would help the dressing to cling rather than drying up. When, eventually, all the potatoes had been skinned, chunked, and coated in dressing, I tasted them. Some more salt was needed, and I also decided to add more lemon juice to balance the oil.

By the time we got to the picnic the dressing had separated slightly; the bright golden rapeseed oil puddling under the potatoes. A quick turnover gave a more even coating. As expected, the potato salad worked well with the ham, providing a creamy contrast in both texture and flavour, while the garlic tied everything together. However I would use more garlic next time, especially for serving alongside ham.