August
Sweetcorn
Home-grown British corn cobs come into their own during August and September. English grown sweetcorn tastes amazing stripped of its leaves and lightly grilled over a medium hot barbecue or plunged into boiling (don’t have salt in the water, it makes the kernels tough) water and served smothered in salty butter and black pepper. Sweetcorn is also known as maize and corn-on-the-cob, sweetcorn is a staple in many part of America and South America.
The fresher the cob, the sweeter and juicier its flavour. As with a lot of the supermarket vegetables the stuff produced on a huge scale is bland and often not ripe, so if you can hunt out small producers or have a go at growing yourself it really does make the world of difference.
Kernels can be scraped off the cob and used in soups, salads, patties etc. The kernels are so starchy, they’re ideal for thickening soups and sauces (careful though – they add real sweetness). You can tell if the kernels are ripe when you squash them between your figures they give out milky juice.
When separating kernels from the cob, you will need to strip away the outer leaves and get rid of any wispy straw-like strands. Using a sharp knife, cut down along the husk, and the kernels will fall off Depending on how tender the sweetcorn is, you’ll probably need about 10-15 minutes boiling. When it comes to barbecuing allow around 10 minutes.
Recipe: Sundried Sweetcorn Cakes
Blackberries
Their vibrant taste makes them perfect for cooking and freezing. Blackcurrant's are wonderful lightly poached with a drop of brandy and drizzled cold over meringues and cream, or hot over vanilla ice cream.
If you manage to survive a couple of hours brambling with the kids in wild hedgerows in late summer you will know that the best way to enjoy eating blackberries or brambles is fresh and as messily as possible.
Cultivated berries are available throughout the year, and America is one of the biggest exporters. Although they're large and glossy, the downside is that they can’t compare to lush, intensely-flavoured wild berries from British hedgerows.
Once picked, you should either eat them straight away, or keep in the fridge for not longer than a day or so. Blackberries and raspberries are often crossed to give other varieties - tayberries and loganberries.
This is how i like to eat them ....
English cream tea, splodge of bramble jam and clotted cream with warm freshly-baked scones.
Blackberry jelly, made with the sweetened strained juice (so its not too pippy), is cracking with good strong cheddar or..
Steeped in a cider vinegar added to a light oil with bitter leaves, melted cheesy croutons, tart apple and hot toasted walnuts.
Apples are natural partners with blackberries so soaked in booze and left for as long as you can bare it then heaped on to baked apples add vanilla ice cream! so good
Did you know...
There’s a superstition that picking blackberries after 29 September is supposed to bring bad luck. You’ve been warned, enjoy them while you can!
Tomatoes
Tomatoes originate from the Andes in South America, where they grow wild in what is now Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador. They were first cultivated by the Aztecs and Incas as early as 700 AD. The English word 'tomato' comes from the Aztec word, tomati. Tomatoes first turned up in Europe in the 16th Century, possibly brought back from Central America by Spanish Conquistadors, while another myths suggests that two Jesuit priests brought them to Italy from Mexico.
I believe the first cultivated tomatoes were yellow and cherry-sized, hence the name golden apples: pommes d' or in French, pomi d'oro in Italian and goldapfel in German. The Italian for tomatoes today is pomodoro, in Europe it was also known as the Peruvian apple. The Latin name for the cultivated tomato is Lycopersicon, or 'wolf peach', and probably the reason for the long-held belief that the tomato was poisonous. This view may have been the result of Renaissance botanists who, relying on Greek and Roman texts made the wrong identification.
The Elizabethans thought the bright red colour of tomatoes was a warning indicator and the fruit lethal. Popular 16th century English herbalists, such as John Gerard, saw no contradiction in writing that, while the Spanish and Italians ate tomatoes, the plant was nevertheless 'of rank and stinking savour.' In fact, tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which includes henbane, mandrake and deadly nightshade (belladonna), which are all poisonous. But potatoes, peppers and aubergines are also members of this plant family, as is tobacco. Nevertheless, don’t try to eat the leaves of tomato plants or the small green fruits sometimes found on potato plants (those Elizabethans just might have hit on something)
People were consuming tomatoes without expiring, ages before the fruit ended up in Europe, and even longer before it found its way back to the Americas with British colonists. Historical reports of one John Gibbon Johnson wolfing down tomatoes on the courthouse steps of Salem, New Jersey in 1820, in a public demonstration to prove their edibility. He did not fall to the ground, frothing at the mouth as had been predicted, a good story, but probably as true as those about killer tomatoes in the movies. Initially Tomatoes were grown in Britain and the rest of Europe as ornamental plants and used for their decorative leaves and fruit. The first known British tomato grower was Patrick Bellow in 1554. Even so, the cultivated tomato bears the name Lycopersicon esculentum, or edible wolf peach just in case.
The French were convinced tomatoes had aphrodisiac properties and called them pommes d'amour or love apples.
Commercial tomato cultivation began In the 19th Century. The first glasshouses were built in Kent and Essex and Sussex after large-scale production of sheet glass was developed. Tomatoes are now the most widely grown 'vegetable' in the world and are cultivated as far north as Iceland and as far south as the Falkland Islands. Fortunately people have preserved the heritage of this plant and we can still enjoy the many ancient varieties of its fruit.
Recipe: Fresh Tomato and Tamarind Chatni
Also in season
lettuce
fennel
loganberries
courgettes
strawberries
greengages
basil
peas
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