March
Parsley
One of the few herbs to stand the chilly air of early spring, parsley comes in two main varieties: flat-leaf and curly. Favoured by Mediterranean cooks, flat-leaf parsley has a more robust flavour than the curly-leaf variety, making it ideal to sauté with other strong flavours, such as garlic and onion. Whichever you choose, use parsley abundantly to lift other savoury flavours and enhance dishes such as soups, casseroles, sauces and salads.
Radishes
The radish has an ancient history and, in distant times, was grown as a staple. As it was cultivated, many varieties were established from the Mediterranean to the Orient giving us the red radish, the large white radish (also known as the daikon or mooli) and the black radish. The common red varieties are eaten and enjoyed as a salad vegetable. When choosing radishes, look for bright green leaves, which indicate freshness and promise a crisp texture and peppery flavour. Radishes are excellent when eaten raw or marinated in vinaigrette.
Early rhubarb
Actually a vegetable but prepared as a fruit, early rhubarb has long, pale, pink stems with small leaves that don't look enticing but have all the freshness and flavour needed to make delicious pies, fools, sorbet or ice cream. Forced or early rhubarb needs very brief cooking and, unless you have a palate for tartness, it really needs sweetening either stew with sugar poach in sugar syrup or sprinkle with the sweet stuff and bake - its vary rarely eaten un -sweetened –however there are some ancient recipes that use rhubarb in savory dished (mainly fish dishes) worth tinkering with the concept but the recipe I am going to give you is little more tried and tested never eat rhubarb raw it tastes horrid and besides that the leaves are poisonous, nasty.
Choose firm stalks not bendy flabby ones and remove the leaves for storage the best way that I have found to store the stalks is to trim them to a manageable size and tie up in a carrier bag but keep refrigerated for up to a week (best freshly cut then straight into the pan though).
You can freeze rhubarb without preparation for about a year but it might loose its colour otherwise the fruit can be poached baked or stewed then frozen.
Cooking rhubarb in an aluminium pan is a real NO NO it has a pretty violent chemical reaction. To be avoided at all costs.
Recipe: Rhubarb and ginger ice cream
Also in season
sorrel
beetroot
mint
carrots
leeks
purple sprouting broccoli
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