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.
Opportunties and approaches for growing food for London in or near the city, from domestic production, allotments and transformed public spaces to community food groups, city farms and the surviving working farms on London’s fringe.
My answers to the Fantastic Four blog meme questions
Check prices now Check today’s price of milk in Tesco / Asda / Sainsburys / Waitrose – Ocado with mySupermarket.co.uk The Rising Price of Milk Two weeks ago, Tesco was widely praised in the media for announcing two initiatives: To increase the price UK dairy farmers receive for milk, while not raising the price of [...]
One of England’s forgotten vegetables, Alexanders are at their most magnificent in April, their stately stems thick and tall on verges and grassy banks. Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) love the coast and often grow within a few miles of the sea, though isolated patches thrive even far inland. Cut and steam the stems and buds, ideally just before the flowers have opened, for an absolutely distinctive, even peculiar, vegetable, a little like celery or parsley.
Sometimes the simplest words turn out to hide concepts of thorny complexity. Putting together my seasonal food cloud for April, I struggled with the question of whether to include Mediterranean oranges. Oranges are one of the joys of winter and early spring, especially the peculiarly sharp sweetness of Sicilian blood oranges. But should they really [...]
No crop dominates the British arable landscape quite like rapeseed (Brassica napus, also known as oilseed rape, the edible variety as canola). From the very beginning of April, previously mundane green fields of this member of the cabbage and turnip family suddenly erupt into luminous flower. Across lowland England, great swathes of countryside are painted [...]
March in England and the peach seems an impossibly distant and exotic fruit, its heady summer aroma almost unimaginable. Out of season peaches always disappoint and the sickly syrupy sweetness of the tinned fruit is altogether different. But late March in Suffolk and peach trees, most of them tight against a south-facing wall for warmth, [...]
The British are unusual in distinguishing apples for eating raw and for cooking. After years of decline, the Bramley, our best known cooker is enjoying new popularity.
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