This week's market report from Wild Harvest features ceps, muscat grape and broad beans as well as a whole host of other fruit and vegetables currently in season which you can see below:
Autumnal Flavours
The meteorological calendar has autumn spanning the months of September, October and November.
The astronomical seasons are based on the equinoxes and solstices. This system places autumn from the 22 September to the 20 December this year.
Without coming over too druid (this is a seasonal update however) when my game suppliers get in touch for the first grouse, I start to think of autumnal offerings.
Europe’s many climates and farming techniques have delivered some classically autumnal fruits, fungi and vegetables a month or so early.
Details of these welcome shifts below.
Wild Mushrooms & Truffles
Russia is producing both medium and baby sized girolles.
Prices are low.
For a properly hydrated, apricot/pine scented, fully formed, flower of a mushroom the enthusiast should look to Scotland.
This shroom when in the form it’s in now, jostles for the number one fungal spot with perfect porcini and new season morels.
Linking into the autumnal tone of this bi-weekly update ceps, pied de mouton and the gothic trompette de la mort are being found in Romania.
We choose to wait for more significant harvests to enhance quality and drive down prices before we buy.
Summer truffles are being lifted out of the ground all over Europe as easily as potatoes.
Now is as good a time as any to preserve these ripe and affordable tubers from Italy which we are flying in several times a week.
Fruits
The stunning muscat grape from Provence has hit our shores. This wine grape packs an unbeatable flavour punch. It’s mighty fine smoky blue skin adds looks to flavour and results in a top class cheese board garnish.
Cob nuts are now coming from France. Here’s the deal with the terms hazelnut, cobnut and filbert.
Both cobnuts and filberts are varieties of hazelnut. We sell the delicious cobnut which pickles far better than the over rated walnut if you ask me.
Greengages have started and this early plum is excellent from the off.
Quetches have started from Germany. This precursor to the damson needs just as much sweetening as it’s cousin.
My team’s eyes are peeled for vine or blood peaches and the mighty and affordable Bursa black fig from Turkey, both of which have been sighted but neither in abundance nor top form.
Enough of my GCSE level English. Here are just some bullet pointed beauties for the busy fruit lover to enjoy right now:-
- Cherries (whack some in that bottle of stolichnaya)
- Apricots
- Charentais melons
- Flat peaches and nectarines
- Yellow and white spherical peaches and nectarines
- More berries and tomatoes than you would care to remember
Vegetables
Broad beans and peas are now coming from this green and pleasant land.
I will shout when sweet corn is English too. It’s currently reached France.
Our baby veg range is at it’s most varied, and changeable weather has prevented foraged lines from burning out.
One of my favourite wild garnishes of the moment is the coriander like sea arrowgrass.
Fresh pulses are pumping for purees, or to gently bulk out summer broths.
As above I’ll dodge any more grammatical errors and avoid risking exhausting attention spans.
Here’s a list of just some vegetables of merit for use in early August:-
- Purple and golden cauliflowers
- Coco and borlotti beans
- Mesclun herb spiked baby salad
- Wild rocket
- Round courgettes and aubergines
- UK cropped runner beans and kohlrabi
Call in on 020 7498 5397 to speak to the team about what other treats we have in store for you today. Visit the website here.
