Fresh Direct

British Fruit and Vegetables: As it is now verified that England and Wales have experienced the coldest winter since 1979 while Scotland and Northern Ireland have suffered the coldest since 1963 it seems remarkable that we have any home-grown produce at all! Nevertheless, swedes, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes and purple sprouting broccoli are all fabulous at the moment, although the last-named product is currently difficult to obtain on the market as the supermarkets have siphoned off most of the crop. Also in their prime are leeks, cauliflower, celeriac and salsify, while rhubarb from the Yorkshire triangle is in the process of switching from the forced “pink” product to its early slender outdoor counterpart. English Chantenay carrots are a real treat at the moment – don’t miss out! One big disappointment has been with sea kale. Sold in little bunches of around 120gm it is exorbitantly priced, and if you do the maths it comes to over £60 per kilo! People may expect to pay this for cheaper truffle products, but when it comes to sea kale…IT’S A CABBAGE!

Imported Fruit and Vegetables: Another year has come and gone for the Passe-crassane pear and it must be said that it was a very poor season with fully ripened fruit available for only two out of the last eight weeks rendering the wax-tip quite superfluous. If you tried it for the first time this year and met with anticlimax give it another try next year; when it is good it is very, very good. Imported pears now include D’Anjou from the USA and Rocha from Portugal. Among the citrus fruits, blood oranges, Amalfi Lemons and mineolas are the current star turns, while pink grapefruit is good and currently inexpensive. Look out for Californian Meyer Lemons, a lemon/orange hybrid, which sometimes turn up in the European markets towards the end of March. Also look out for new season wet garlic as supply from Egypt, Turkey and Cyprus is imminent. By mid-March the bulbs should be large and approaching  their sweet best. A recent visit to the Rungis market in Paris threw up a few delights: the best tomato around at the moment has to be the French Coeur de Pigeon, a tiny plum tomato with a full, satisfying flavour. South American Moscatel grapes are also world-class, as are round Italian mauve aubergines. Another joy was red-fleshed dragonfruit from Thailand, which has a rich sweetness quite incomparable to the lacklustre watery emptiness of its white-fleshed cousin. Elsewhere on the market passionfruit, lychees, pineapples and pomegranates were all at their best. Also apparent were early pulses: broad beans from southern Spain and Borlotti beans and fresh peas from southern Italy. The peas, however, are little pellets of tasteless wood and I would recommend waiting a couple of months until better produce comes onstream from further north. This is not the only caveat concerning imports: peppers, cucumber, cauliflowers and salad leaves have all been affected by the cold weather across Europe and are in short supply and therefore more expensive than usual, while supplies of dill and chervil have been diminished as produce from Israel has been decimated by infestation.

Wild Things: Black Winter truffles will come to an abrupt end by the middle of the month and prices are climbing rapidly as the month begins. White Spring truffles (Bianchetti) from Italy should persist for a few weeks and the price is quite reasonable at £6-10 per truffle. Wild mushrooms continue to arrive from southern Europe and North Africa but the quality is beginning to decline. These fungi (pied de mouton, chanterelle jaune and trompette) should be around until April, but keen mycophiles would be well advised to consider switching to exotic cultivated varieties such as shimeji, king oyster and shiitake for the moment. However, it is not all doom-and-gloom on the mushroom front – new season morels have arrived in Rungis! The first batch, from Mexico, was big, ugly and expensive, but subsequent product from Turkey is first-rate. We have delayed purchasing until the price dropped below the nose-bleed threshold, but are now happy to say that we have bought our first consignment which is ready for your delectation. On the vegetable front, previous years have frequently seen us able to offer wild garlic by the beginning of March, but this cold season has decreed otherwise. At the start of the month the “ramsons” are like little blades of grass peeping above the snow, but we hope to have them onstream in around three weeks’ time, when they should be joined by the first wild leeks.