Fresh Direct

Hi Chefs,

As usual I hope you are all well.  Sunday was a little bit of a foraging disaster for me due to the sudden ground frost that greeted me at 6am.  Trying to pick semi frozen wild leeks and garlic is not good for two reasons.  Firstly it’s a good way to get yourself some mild frostbite and secondly the bag of nice fresh leeks turns to a bag of not so nice leek mush very quickly.  We had to sit around and wait for the sun to warm things up a little,  however because we are picking shade loving plants that took a while!  When we did start picking the leaves were still wet so please be aware the shelf life on these products will not be as good this week.  Next week it will be back to normal with the added bonus of some edible flowers in with the leeks.  Our Cornish picker is still coming up with the goods from his comparatively warm coast sending us pennywort, sea beet and the interesting alexanders. 

The white spring truffles have taken their time but are finally about in abundance which will cause the price to drop soon.  However at 39p per gram it is still very good value for money.  There are still perigord truffles about but these are getting scarce so the price is beginning to climb.  The mushrooms are still OK but the prices are still daft, sorry.  The good news is that the morels have started,  the bad news is that you will have to sell your house to get some so I am going to wait a week to see what happens. 

I am hopeful for some more spring produce to start coming in soon and have taken a chance and ordered some wet garlic and broadbeans, I may well be jumping the gun here but we will see what happens.  We have finally run out of onion squash and will not be getting any more in so it is season over for all the decent squashes now.

 I am hoping to see some baby kiwis come into stock this week.  This is a cute little product being about the size of a large grape and hairless making them a nice snack (for those that like the taste of kiwi,  for those that don’t it’s a rubbish snack).  The moscatel grapes are yet to drop in price but are worth every penny in my opinion.

Please take care and I will speak to you next week,

Andy.