Seasonality for the Common or Garden Cook

A major benefit of growing your own food is that it brings you closer to natural seasonality - for me that being the sort defined by things appearing ready to eat in the kitchen garden, rather than the new series of some reality TV programme starring the tattooed brain dead, or the first fixture of a sporting calendar. It is a more nuanced seasonality than Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn (I actually prefer the more descriptive word Fall, once general in Britain).


Among the more notable dates of the produce seasons is New Potato Day, when the very first tiny new spuds are rushed from soil to pot with the minimum delay between. I've noted elsewhere here, I'm certain, that there is no comparison between such sprint-to-table potatoes and even the very best the shops or market can provide. It is - for me at least - interesting that the gardener can influence seasonality in this regard: we grew two huge black plastic potfuls (filled with our home-made compost) of spuds in a greenhouse, so that New Spud Day was at the very end of May, while the ones grown in the kitchen garden proper were only ready in the second half of June. An admission: the flavour of the ones grown in the kitchen garden was notably superior.


Other such events are First Strawberry Day, and First Courgette Day - that latter a week ago, though it was first two courgettes day, as two were ready together (used in a veggie sauce for pasta). There are less joyous seasonal dividers too, such as when we say goodbye to the last of many crops, but there again we can influence things a bit in our favour: by protecting some courgette plants we managed to have the last of them in early November one mild year, and not under glass either.


Hard though we try, however, there is much beyond our control, and that makes it all the more engrossing (again, for me). Two months ago I prepared a 1m x 1m patch to grow, fingers crossed without much hope of success, morels. A blend of sand, home-made compost, bonfire ash courtesy of a kind neighbour, decayed and decaying fragments of wood, chips of charcoal, rotting leaves, and some morel stuff bought from a reputable supplier, was mixed together and used on a square of ground beneath our oldest apple tree (morels are said to grow best in apple orchards, on ground where there has been a recent bonfire). I have kept the patch weeded if not overly so, moist to ensure the spores or seeds or whatever they be are not dessicated, and put the odd fallen young apple on there too. In May, we can but hope, we could just have our First Morel Day.

The Chosen Ones

Looking at the post I wrote yesterday focussed on the threatened fiasco of Brexit, what it may mean to our food supplies, and similar woes, all the good stuff I feel about matters culinary was squeezed out. That's sad. As I hope is evident, food, cookery and all related matters actually bring me enormous pleasure. The resilience of providing some of our own food and the economy of using what we have intelligently, and what can be the joy of food, can be closely linked.

One of my food habits illustrates that. When we are at home I try every day, year round, to pick something from the garden, the (soon to be vacated) allotment, greenhouse or conservatory that we will eat that day. There is a comforting, or perhaps complacent, pleasure in choosing what to gather in. In the autumn it's very easy: fruit from our growing collection of trees; the remaining salads; crops various, and so on all need picking and using. In the winter it gets tougher, and often I'm limited to picking a herb or two - bay, sage, rosemary... But they're still fresh additions that perk up innumerable dishes. They are in their own tiny way life enhancing, and certainly flavour enhancing - sage picked seconds before going in the pot is vastly superior to the musty leaves sold in supermarkets, and I resent being asked to pay £0.75 for the privilege of using them.

Similarly one of today's culinary tasks, baking bread, fits both the careful husbandry (how apt) and the epicurean sides of my existence. It started yesterday with the preparation of a biga - the Italian version of a (very much sort of) sourdough starter, that isn't sour (unless forgetfully you leave it much more than 24 hours before using). This afternoon I'll be making dough - rather a sensual process in itself - to which a ladle of the biga will be added, and cooking it up for the evening meal, fresh, warm and scenting the whole house, with a loaf or two for the freezer as well. Sadly, as the currently absent Sternest Critic is wont to point out, I never manage a decent crusty crust, in spite of which only crumbs remain when I do have time to bake my own, which will cost a lot less than £2.50 for a Waitrose grand pain, excellent though they are (and with a good crust). And baking is far more fun than the work to which I'll now return.