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Last of the summer bounty
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Fruit
Vegetables
Meat and fish
Other seasons and reasons
August really is a peach of a month, with the best of our Northern European fruit and vegetables dovetailing with the dramatic flavours and colours of the Mediterranean. Dee McQuillan finds some berry good reasons to go shopping
Fruit
- In Britain it is berry time: raspberries, redcurrants, whitecurrants, cultivated blackberries, wild bilberries, blueberries, gooseberries (including gobstopper-sized sweet Leveller gooseberries for a lucky few), more strawberries and the powerful purple blackcurrant. Organise a jamming session as the prices come down.
- Late in August the earliest English apples (mainly Discovery variety) and plums should appear. The best imported fruit includes peaches, nectarines and melons, plus new-season Italian grapes and Greek figs.
Recipes to try
Vegetables
- For real flavour the wait is now over for peppers, aubergines and those big Marmande and beef-type tomatoes – check the box too, to make sure they come from Southern Europe, then make the Chilled Spanish Gazpacho we've specially added to the site.
- French summer potatoes (La Ratte, Roseval, Belle de Fontenay) are expensive but delicious – Pink Fir Apple is the British rival and a bit harder to scrub. Our home-grown stars are runner beans and sweetcorn, the latter as freshly picked as possible. Peas may peter out, but home-grown fennel, courgettes and herbs continue.
- Baby beetroots cooked whole, then halved, are perfect with the abundant salad leaves, a few boiled eggs and an old-fashioned dressing.
Recipes to try
Meat and fish
- Delia loves summer lamb: try her Lamb Kebabs with Lemon and Rosemary.
- Mid-month – the so-called glorious 12th – marks the start of the game season when it is permissible to take a pop at a grouse. In shopping terms grouse are scarce and expensive so there is no official Delia recipe, but intrepid cooks might use her unusual Roast Quail Wrapped in Pancetta and Vine Leaves with Grape Confit recipe.
- The fish list is very inviting: Scottish herring, Cornish mackerel, sea bass, whitebait, sardines or pilchards, crab, prawns, lobster, monkfish, squid, plaice and Dover sole.
Recipes to try
Other seasons and reasons
- To tell the truth most of us try to mark the silly season by cooking as little as possible and simply acquiring and assembling salads and fruits so that we can enjoy our holidays. The sight we hanker after is the check-in at the airport – we've had enough of those weather forecasters putting brave faces on another Atlantic low.
- Mediterranean longings may be kept at bay with some of Delia's summery recipes, such as Greek-style Squid with Lemon, Garlic and Olive Oil and Tunisian Aubergine Salad with Coriander and Yoghurt.
- Those who are made of sterner stuff might care to amuse the children by baking gingerbread men or planning a home-made picnic lunch featuring Scotch eggs or a pie with freshly made bread and a salad or two.
Recipes to try
