Читать книгу Kitchen Memories - Lucy Boyd - Страница 29

This is a strange time of year for ingredients. It can be cold, windy and frosty with days that have buds on stems outlined by blue skies. Leafy vegetables that grow above ground and need frost to taste their best have been delicious; cavolo nero and the chicory family have kept a balance with all the autumn root vegetables. It is time for change, to lighten up even though the produce remains quite limited. The game season finished at the end of February and the spring lamb has yet to come in.

The forced shoots of rhubarb and sea kale are an early sign of spring and are eaten almost as a delicacy. For me, sea kale marks a transition from the winter months into early spring. By eating the early sprouting shoots it seems as if you are literally eating a mouthful of a season to come.

Thinking about what to cook in March is really about how to change the way I approach the ingredients I have been cooking with all winter. There are new arrivals in the form of early carrots and small baby turnips, which have a vibrancy to them that is incredibly refreshing after months of earthy flavours. Beetroots in the shops, or stored since the autumn, look tired and are soft to the touch, with slackened skin that needs removing before they are boiled or roasted. They look ugly too, their skins like overcoats that have spent too long in the trenches covering the wrong type of sweetness. Whereas in summer beetroots can be pulled from the ground, their skins, taut and full of flavour, are kept on and they are delicious roasted or boiled whole when they are still relatively small and young.

At this time of year I want to make light of the ingredients available; griddling a chicken breast or poaching a chicken with a few carrots, leeks and celery seems less hearty and comforting than making a stew of it, which is more suited to cold nights. Early soft-leaved herbs such as marjoram, mint and parsley add an enlivening quality that reminds me of spring and new growth.