Like many of the most abundant foods, the apple has depths obscured by its familiarity. In 1965, Elspeth Huxley wrote: “You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one as long as it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform and bright.” The modern food industry demands uniformity, but thousands of varieties of apple still exist beyond the cosmetically perfect supermarket shelves. Our climate can’t compete to produce the large, sweet apples that dominate the global market, but our brisk winters and long summers produce apples of subtle complexity. The apples of East Anglia – and elsewhere – deserve rediscovery, recognition and preservation.
Discovery is the earliest commercial apple variety, ripe in mid-August. For a few weeks, Discovery apples are the best around, juicy, crunchy and aromatic.
For their sublime aroma and intense sweetness, and for the sake of our desperately declining cherry orchards, do whatever it takes to find and eat some British cherries in July. We’re losing our cherry orchards at an alarming rate and the only way to save them is to eat more British cherries.
An essential field guide for anyone who wants to know about arable crops: their identification, cultivation, history and uses.
The intense gold of cold-pressed rapeseed oil (otherwise known as canola oil) reflects the yellowing spring fields of oilseed rape. A few farmers are now producing distinctive cold-pressed rapeseed oil, with clear provenance, from their oilseed crops, but the oil itself deserves more attention.
