Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater - Страница 46

The thought of shopping for home-grown fruit and vegetables in February makes my heart sink. There is only so much enthusiasm you can muster for kohlrabi and potatoes, floury apples and crates of stinky old sprouts.

As I turn the corner by the farmers’ market, I am greeted by a stall almost hidden by tin buckets of daffodils, the traditional variety with large trumpets, the sort that look so cheerful in a jug by the kitchen sink. Beyond them is David Deme’s apple stall with bright boxes of Cox’s as crisp as shattered ice, russets still in fine nick and plump Comice and Conference pears. There is much pleasure to be found in a pear on a cold winter’s day, with its crisp flesh and sweet, nutty juice.

Iridescent, candy-striped beetroots I have only ever seen in a seed catalogue, boxes of curly, red and Russian kale, fat carrots for juicing and tight little Brussels on the stem are in A1 condition. One grower is showing a wooden crate of the perkiest celeriac I have ever seen, each root with a neat tuft of green leaves looking as if they were dug only an hour ago.

I stop at the stall selling cartons of Hurdlebrook Guernsey cream from Olive Farm in Somerset and proper untreated milk. Dairy produce doesn’t come better than this. It is not just about richness, it is about flavour. This is cream worth waiting all week for, a world away from the thin white stuff in the ‘super’markets. I buy double cream and then rhubarb for a fool. The shopping trip I almost abandoned as a bad idea has come good, and I walk home with a heavy basket.