Seasonal foods in July 2010

All I want to do this week is eat salads and sorbet, but there’s so much else going on if the heat hasn’t got to your appetite yet. Here’s my seasonal foods round-up for this month:

Fruit: bilberries, blueberries, cherries, currants (black, red and white), elderflowers, gooseberries, loganberries, raspberries, strawberries and wild strawberries. Possibly also some last sticks of summer rhubarb. Imported apricots, figs, melons, nectarines, pinapples, watermelon.

Vegetables: aubergines, basil, baby turnips, baby beetroot, broad beans (finishing soon), broccoli (summer calabrese), celery, chard (baby leaf for salads), chives, coriander, courgettes and courgette flowers, cucumbers, dill, fennel, fresh garlic, globe artichokes, green beans, horseradish, kohlrabi, lamb’s lettuce, lettuce, mint, new potatoes, parsley, peas, peppers, radishes, rocket, samphire, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, summer cabbage, summer squash, tomatoes, watercress. Technically the asparagus season ended last week at the summer solstice, but you may find a few last spears of the British good stuff if you look.

Fish and shellfish: black bream, brown crab (hen), brown and rainbow trout, cuttlefish, early plaice and sole, herring, lobster, mackerel, Mediterranean sardines, prawns, pike, pilchards, pollack, scallops, Scottish squid, sea bass, sea trout, shrimps, signal crayfish, spider crab, young salmon (grilse). Some say this is the peak time for crab, lobster, mackerel, prawns and shrimps.

Meat, poultry and game: Not a special month for any particular meat or game.

Cheeses: Stinking Bishop, British goats’ cheese. Crottin de Chavignol, Saint Remy, Tomme Vaudoise, Valencay. Buffalo mozzarella.

The windowsill garden got somewhat too big for its boots and some of it had to be moved outdoors and into bigger pots. In the last couple of days we’ve had home grown cherry tomatoes, baby leaf spinach and chard, early peas, broad beans, cucumber, courgette, mixed baby leaf lettuce, spring onions, radishes, parsley, coriander, spicy purple basil, and broccoli leaves (eaten as cabbage). I’m getting the hang of cut and come again and sequential sowing now, so hopefully we’ll have a fresh meal for two people out of the garden on most days for the rest of the summer. Not bad for a back yard with no top soil, and a slightly lazy gardener!

We’ve mostly been having salads, or huge helpings of veg with our dinners, but Beau’s also cooked up some lovely fruity puddings as well with bought fruit.

Have you been growing your own fruit or veggies? How’s it going? Even if you haven’t been gardening, you can still have a little trip to the market at the weekend. What are you going to cook?