Good Morning Chef
I hope, as always, that you had the most loveliest weekend. I spent mine at the farm again to celebrate Father’s Day with my family. We also picked up our two new chicks and 20,000 honey bees for Dad’s new hive, as well as attending the Three Counties fair (Herefordshire, Worcestershire & Gloucestershire) to see our new Ryeland ewes in a breed show and the father in a sheep shearing competition. It’s good to escape London.
The Wild Harvest team also had a beautiful time last Thursday at Taste of London. Our highlights included Sean Burbidge at Petrus’ Pea and Mint Mousse with Goat’s Curd and Pancetta, Nick Carter and Chris Sutherland’s Drunken English Cherries in Jelly with Foie Gras and Brioche, Chris King at Roux at The Landau’s Salt Cod Brandade, Crispy squid and Espelette Pepper and, of course, having the pleasure to meet such influential chefs as Michel Roux Jr and Gary Rhodes and Ben Tish’s demonstration (of Opera Tavern). We were also very excited to see Melrose and Morgan make their first appearance at the festival, including a great tasting of a ham hock terrine, made in collaboration with Bryn Williams of Odette’s. I hope you had the opportunity to make it down for the weekend, and we were so proud of our customers and their dishes in the festival.
As we roll on closer to the Summer Solstice, great produce is continuing in our warehouse and stores. Here is our full banquet menu for this week:
Mushroom and Truffles:
Small Girolles are flying out our door, and coming in with consistently great supply from Bulgaria and Macedonia. We can only get better, by moving on to Poland later in the season and Scotland in July. North American Morels are great quality, small, clean, complete and with a great honeycomb pattern and will continue until early July. We may see the last of the Bulgarian Mousseron (aka Fairy Ring Mushroom) next week, they have been in great shape this season and we look forward to a re-appearance from North America in October.
Italian black summer truffles are consistently good and very affordable; the nose on them is particularly remarkable with delicate marbling inside.
Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables:
The season is booming!
Beans beans beans! Fresh coco and borlotti beans and beautiful English broad beans
English Peas
A great selection of French baby vegetables including purple and yellow carrots
Jersey Royal potatoes, at a fantastic price, and super fresh, rich New Potatoes from the Garden of Elveden
Ratte and Purple potatoes are also available in our potato range
White French Asparagus is mighty fine, though the spears started to thicken and English green Asparagus from Lincolnshire is still on the menu and the quality is excellent
The most incredibly coloured Italian Round Aubergines and the most intriguing Hand-Grenade Courgettes
Baby and Poivrade Artichokes have limited availability and a little more costly at this point in the season due to weather conditions, but we hope to have a drop in price soon
Foraged produce from Norfolk includes Sea Aster and Sea Purslane
A more extensive collection from Scotland including Sweet Cicely Pods, Hogweed and Wild Fennel
Don’t forget our celebrated garnishes and leaves including English Pea Shoots, Ficoide glacier leaf and Metisse, an exotic red leaf shaped like rocket with a beet flavour and beautiful Courgette Flowers
A great range of Tomatoes including plum, cherry, babies all on the vine and Inca heritage tomatoes
Beautiful red Cherries from Spain and America and sweeter white Cherries from France
Charentais Melon
Alfonso Mangoes
Superb English Strawberries
Flat Peaches
Yellow Nectarines
Fresh Apricots (as featured in Paola’s apricot cheesecake in the Wild Harvest offices last Friday)
English Gooseberries and French Blush Gooseberries
Fresh Raspberries
Italian black, fully ripe Figs
Blood Oranges are back for a record breaking season
Sea Beets and Nettles are now in a period of new growth and will not be available until mid-July
Sweet Cicely has finished now it has gone to seed, but the pods add a unique anis spike to seafood risottos or make a great substitute for green cardamom pods
Wild Asparagus has now finished for the season, and we also say goodbye to our tubers, Jerusalem Artichokes, Chervil and Parsley root, which are having their annual summer rest after a productive season
Close but no Cigar
Our Scottish forager is less than a month away from picking Rock Samphire, a different beast to Marshland Samphire, which is available now.
Wild Strawberries (Fraises des Bois) and Mara des Bois (a wild strawberry cross) are less than a fortnight away from a second flush in Kent of super fresh and flavour packed berries after a helping hand from Tlaloc, the Aztec God of Rain. We are closely following the quality of stone fruit from France and Spain, with regular office tastings, as featured on our twitter profile; we are now waiting to expand our offering to include Blood Nectarines, White Peaches and the elusive Vine Peach.
We have seen the last of this season’s Pyrenean milk-fed lamb until September, but have continually great offers daily on poultry, including Poussin, Guinea Fowl, corn-fed and Label Anglais chicken and French squab pigeons.
What an update! If you want more don’t forget to follow us on twitter and if you want to sign your colleagues up to our weekly updates please send me their contact details to [email protected]. In case you haven’t heard, we have updated our Sosa technical information, if you wish to receive a copy please drop me an email. I will leave you with a lovely little quote from one of my favourite childhood stories, Wind in the Willows, to warm your cockles on this cold start to the summer months:
“When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.”
- Kenneth Grahame
As always, if you have any further questions or just want to have a good chat about seasonal produce, please do get in touch. I look forward to speaking with you soon; have a beautiful week,
Louise Thomas
Wild Harvest
[email protected]
