Seasonal Produce - June
June! The sun is shining and the season for sweet-but-tart delicious tastes has begun.
This is the time to indulge your sweet tooth. Fresh fruit starts to appear in June and July: a veritable feast of flavour! Strawberries with real summer flavour have finally arrived and you should start to see grapes, apricots, melons and nectarines.
Personally, I am looking forward to my very favourite dessert, fresh raspberries with cream: perfection. But if you aren’t familiar with gooseberries,you should definitely try this 15th century recipe for gooseberry fool. There’s no point in trying to improve upon perfection.
This is your last chance for seasonal asparagus but you’ll find summer vegetables at their prime. Perk up your salads with young and crunchy raw veg: baby carrots and thin-sliced fennel and spring onion and sliced radish with salt. Try updating your salads with different types of lettuce and young spinach and watercress. It is also a good time to explore the versatility of courgettes / zucchini, a type of small marrow that soaks up flavour, making it perfect for eating with herbs and butter. The smaller they are, the more flavour they tend to have. Broad beans are at their best now too, still young and soft enough that you can serve them steamed.
Need more inspiration? Things to Try Eating (Seasonal Food) is a great diagram by Andrew Fox showing seasonal food throughout the year - go large!
