In food terms each season brings something new and delicious and in early autumn that means Squash, Beetroots, Courgettes, Mushrooms, Radishes, Carrots, Curly Kale and Cavolo Nero. Also, Apples and Pears, Plums and Blackberries – just a few of the colourful options available now.
As ever, unless you are lucky enough to grow your own, the challenge is where to find good organic vegetables and fruit. This week mine came from Riverford Organics. The supermarket just can’t match them for quality and flavour. Don’t be fooled into thinking the supermarket is the cheapest and so the best value. It’s not. If you are not already convinced, please do try it. I hope you will see that these organic fruits and vegetables are so very good; that you will want to take on the challenge to order a weekly or fortnightly box and use them all up to make some simple, delicious meals using only a few ingredients; and that at the end of the week you will be pleased to have an empty fridge, ready for the next delivery of seasonal delights.
If you liked the recipe for Pickled Cucumbers, you might like to try the same recipe but substituting Beetroots, Carrots or Radishes for the cucumbers.
Other seasonal vegetable and fruit recipes in these pages to try now are, Beetroot Soup, Roast Beetroots, Roasted Squash with Citrus Zest, Carrot and Lentil Soup, and Crispy Cavolo Nero.
And for fruits, Stewed Plums, Spiced Pear Chutney, Baked Pears with Amaretto, Apple Dessert Cake, Spiced Apple Sauce and Bircher Muesli.
Other good things around now are, Duck, Lamb, Crab and Clams so you may like to try Slow Roast Duck Legs with Leeks, Shepherd’s Pie, Slow Roast Shoulder of Lamb or some Linguine with Crab or Linguine with Clams.
I also want to mention Pyghtle, a delicious cheese, made by Emily Tydeman at Broughton Hall Dairy in Suffolk in small batches using sheep’s milk. It is a soft creamy cheese with herbal flavours which, as you might expect, vary throughout the seasons and it has a white, wrinkly rind.
And lastly, for now, I recently tried a delicious sparkling wine, produced by the Wiston Estate in Sussex. Another success for English wine.
If you want a healthier and more environmentally friendly diet, a good start would be to cook from scratch, avoid buying ready-processed meals, and so avoid foods with a high sugar and salt content. Have a look at food labels, you will likely be amazed by how much salt and sugar is included and, worse, how many of the ingredients are not recognisable as food.
Sherbhert champions delicious, healthy and sustainable food where its production minimises environmental damage, exploitation, animal suffering and subsequent processing. Sherbhert’s recipes are simple and use mainly UK seasonal produce sourced as locally as possible.
Sherbhert occasionally recommends suppliers entirely because of their good produce and ethos.
