Seasonal pleasures

Nothing tempts the tastebuds quite like food that’s in season. Fiona Beckett extols the perennial variety, superior quality and wide availability of truly fresh ingredients

Every Tuesday a large cardboard box arrives on my doorstep filled with seasonal vegetables. In March the highlights are the purple sprouting broccoli, ugly, misshapen but irresistibly nutty Jerusalem artichokes and chunky leeks with vigorous, deep-green tops. May sees asparagus, sweet new potatoes and bunches of slender carrots topped with a profusion of feathery leaves, then on come the summer ingredients thick and fast: peas, beans, peppery rocket and dark watercress, heavily scented basil, small, sweet strawberries, far too uneven to ever find their way into the highly regimented supermarket punnets.

It becomes my starting point for planning the week’s meals. The more perishable ingredients, like broccoli, will be steamed while still spanking fresh as an accompaniment to a crisply seared piece of fish. Leeks can be made a couple of days later into a simple, nourishing, French-style soup to be eaten with some good farmhouse cheddar and crusty bread. Carrots slow-braised in their juices with a sprinkling of herbs will make the perfect partner for some spring lamb cutlets, I decide. It’s a very different way of shopping for food: more demanding of the home cook, who has to adapt to what is available, but much more rewarding. Seasonal food is not only cheaper, fresher and more tasty but always feels appropriate to the outdoor temperature. Who wants to eat strawberries in November or parsnips in June?
There’s a fabulous synchronicity between vegetables and other ingredients that are in season together. Jersey potatoes, fresh peas and wild salmon, a perfect trio; gooseberries and elderflower; tomatoes and basil. The wild mushrooms you pick in autumn mirror the subtle, meaty flavour of wild game, while savoury root vegetables are made for winter roasts.

For certain produce the season is tantalisingly short: blink and you’ll miss it. Seville oranges, for example—the kind you need for making marmalade—come in after Christmas and are gone by the end of January. The English asparagus season lasts a precious six weeks (imports never taste as good as spears that are freshly cut). The new season’s broad beans are only at their perfect best for three to four weeks, after which they get bigger and coarser and need to be peeled.

Fortunately it’s never been easier to buy fresh produce in season—at least, not since the heyday of the high street when every town had a choice of independent butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. Nowadays, thanks to the internet, you can pick and choose where you shop: fish from Cornwall, meat from Scotland, even fresh ingredients from Italy or France. You can and should visit farmers’ markets, pick your own or grow your own. The weekly supermarket shop is in many ways the least interesting option.

Thoby Young of the the Fresh Food Company, a pioneer in the field which has been supplying fresh food boxes for 15 years, dubs the phenomenon “the new food economy”. It includes everything that isn’t a supermarket: farmers’ markets, farm-gate sales and independent companies that do home deliveries. “It’s a myth that supermarkets are the most convenient place to buy fresh food,” he says. “There’s no-one to talk to about the produce. They’re not really shops—they’re cash-and-carries charging retail prices.”

What’s more, the fresh food they sell may be neither as fresh nor as seasonal as you think. The problem with today’s sophisticated supply chain is that it’s possible to extend the shelf life of a product way beyond the point when it’s at its best. “If you pick spinach, for example, it’s fine on day one, by day three it’s limp and by day four it’s completely knackered,” says Joanna Blythman, author of Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets. “But thanks to modified atmospheric packaging a supermarket can sell spinach that’s at least a week old, maybe more.” Inevitably the taste, texture and nutritional quality suffer. “So much fruit is now picked before it’s fully ripe to give it a shelf life,” says Blythman. “Take peaches. They look OK but they have no aroma or flavour. They don’t eat well at any point. You get lettuces that look perfectly fresh because their outer leaves have been taken away, but when you bite into them they taste bitter rather than sweet as they should. If you eat an English apple in June or July it’s approaching a year old. It’s impossible to tell how fresh something is.”
Countless health scares have also made the public increasingly nervous about the chemicals used on fresh produce to get it to their doorstep all year round. Sales of organic produce are growing by £2m a week, according to figures from the Soil Association. Retail sales are now worth £1.12bn (compared to £105m in 1994); and at 10 per cent, the annual growth rate is twice that of the conventional grocery market, thanks to Young’s new food economy.

Awareness of what’s in season has been boosted by the restaurant trade. Many talented young chefs are choosing to open a pub restaurant where the focus is on simple, fresh food. The public’s view has changed too. “There was a time when the majority of people only ate out on special occasions and when they did they expected to see expensive ingredients on the menu. Today’s more sophisticated restaurant-goer values the opportunity to eat in places that can source the best seasonal ingredients,” says Barny Haughton, owner of the organic restaurant Quartier Vert in Bristol.

Chef suppliers have even extended their services to the domestic customer hungry for quality produce. Top restaurant supplier Solstice can provide fresh ingredients from all over Europe, including white asparagus, globe artichokes, barba di frate (“friar’s beard”), puntarelle and authentic Italian rucola (rocket). “We’re in the market looking for quality ingredients 365 days of the year,” says the company’s founder, former chef Philip Britten. “The truth is that for most of the year the Mediterranean ingredients we’re all so keen on using in this country are better from the Med because the peak season here is so short. Why buy unripe British tomatoes when Sicily produces the best in the world?”

The ease of online access doesn’t mean you should miss out on the pleasure of shopping in person for seasonal food. “I know what veg are in season because we buy them on a daily basis but I still like to shop for my own produce in farmers’ markets and shops,” says Rose Gray, co-owner of The River Café. “I love the Greek and Italian shops. For example, the artichokes in April are fantastic.”

Londoners are now in the enviable position of having two weekly markets, at Borough and Marylebone, whose sheer variety, colour and quality make your jaw drop, but many towns and villages now have a farmers’ market at least once a month. In between, you should grab any opportunity to buy from the few greengrocers that still exist and source local produce, or direct from the farm gate where you can often find gluts of fruit and vegetables in season such as strawberries, runner beans and plums.

Many farms also offer the facility to pick your own, an activity in which the whole family can engage and which can launch children into a lifelong passion for food. What’s remarkable about the growth in the new food economy is that the public’s desire for fresh organic food shows no sign of becoming sated. “I really think we’re witnessing a cultural revolution,” says Quartier Vert’s Haughton. “I can’t think of any chef I know and admire who isn’t excited about ingredients as they come into season. Local food is here to stay. It’s not just a passing fad or fashion.”

Catch it while you can: the food calender

June
Strawberries, peas, broad beans

July
Apricots, cherries, raspberries

August
Tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, aubergines, corn on the cob, peaches, nectarines

September
Apples, blackberries, pears, figs, wild mushrooms, squash, new season’s native oysters

October
Game, chestnuts

November and through the winter
Carrots, parsnips, celeriac and swedes

December
Sprouts, fresh cranberries

January
Seville oranges

February
Forced rhubarb, lemons

March
Purple sprouting broccoli, leeks

April
Spring lamb, wild garlic

May
Asparagus, Jersey Royals, fresh herbs such as mint and parsley at their best, gulls’ eggs