Cooking with fresh, seasonal veg
Cooking
and eating food you have produced yourself is one of life’s great
pleasures. Whether you have grown and cooked everything on the table or
just the sprinkling of chives on top of the dish you have a wonderful
sense of satisfaction that “that is all my own work”.
I have been lucky to have a large garden, a dedicated veg grower for a
husband and a family of enthusiastic and discriminating consumers, but
the family are now flat dwellers and rely on box schemes and farmers’
markets, as do I when crisis looms. Buying seasonal veg from these
sources means they’re fresher, better tasting and you appreciate them
more when they are available, rather than eating the same things all
year. It is of course much better for the environment too. So these
recipes are for everyone who cares about fresh fruit and vegetables and
who hopes to grow something for themselves.
For most of the recipes I have given exact quantities, times and
temperatures but some are variations on a theme and for these I hope you
will use your judgement about what balance of flavours will appeal to
you. As cooks we constantly adapt and my aim is to give you fresh ideas
about what to do when there are only carrots left in the box, you have
gone through every courgette recipe known to humankind or have a handful
of the first mange-tout peas to feed four. Bon appetit!
We arrange our recipes according to vegetable, giving you some tips on
picking, choosing and preparing, and within each vegetable section the
recipes are grouped according to season, for those vegetables and fruits
that span more than one season of the year.
Here are our first vegetables for you to browse: