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If your memories of eating outdoors are peppered with childhood nightmares of soggy salad-cream sandwiches and ant-covered ice-cream, you might be less than keen to whip out the garden table this summer.

Serving lunch outside can be made into a far more grown-up affair, so banish thoughts of stale egg-mayo sarnies from your mind and try planning a gourmet feast.

You can get inspired by visiting the Big Lunch site, where they're keen to get us all meeting our neighbours for lunch on Sunday 18 July. Nearly a million people in the UK were involved last year, holding everything from hog roasts, small picnics and massive street parties.

If you're keen to put on a posh picnic, serve your lunch on a table dressed with a tablecloth, use wine glasses and napkins, and stay away from the plastic knives and forks. Put some garden flowers in a vase and light some citronella tealights to keep away insects.

Prepare this easy-but-elegant courgette tart, using the wonderful courgettes that are in season in the UK at the moment.

Courgette, mushroom and ricotta tart

Preheat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7. Combine three tablespoons of tomato paste with two crushed garlic cloves. Using a ready rolled puff pastry sheet, mark out a 2cm border around the edge using a knife. Transfer the pastry to a baking sheet and score the inside of the border with a fork and spread with the tomato and garlic mixture.

Top the tomato mixture with a pre-mixed batch of 250g ricotta cheese, 2 eggs, 100g grated cheddar, 100g thinly sliced mushrooms and layer the top with a finely sliced courgette. Drizzle well with some olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 20 minutes until the pastry has risen and the ingredients are cooked through. Serve with a green salad, sliced beetroot and chilled white wine.