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Sweet November
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Fruit
Vegetables
Meat and fish
Other seasons and reasons
Pumpkins, beetroot, chestnuts, grapes and dates – just some of nature's sweeties which Delia Online's Dee McQuillan has found in the shops and markets this month. But also on offer are game, cranberries, walnuts, truffles, radicchio and much more.
Fruit
The apple harvest is almost over so supplies of all the keepers – Cox's, Bramley, Russets and the rare Blenheims and Lord Lambournes – will come from cold store and continue right into the new year. The last pears to be picked are generally the Comice – its only rival for melting deliciousness is the Passacrassana, grown in Italy (buy on sight!). True fruits of November include cranberries, which feature in Delia's Christmas Day menus, dates, grapes, passion fruit, persimmon, pineapple, pomegranate and home-grown quince, plus the nuts: walnuts (wet and dry) and fat French chestnuts.
Recipes to try
Vegetables
Daylight hours are in short supply, alas, but November is a great time for buying vegetables: beetroot, cabbages (Savoy, winter, cavolo nero etc), celeriac, curly kale, Jerusalem artichoke, leeks, late wild mushrooms, parsnips, potatoes (Desirée and King Edward), French and Spanish onions, pumpkin and squash, shallots, Swede, turnip and watercress are all fresh and firm. Radicchio, especially the cos lettuce-shaped Treviso variety, will be on the menu at many restaurants, but maybe not at Norwich City because Delia prefers another favourite from the seasonal stockpile, the true (carefully washed) East-Anglian dirty celery, which is grown banked-up in earth so that the stems stay white.
Recipes to try
Cabbage with Bacon, Apples and Cider
Quick Stir-fried Spiced Red Cabbage with Apples
Celeriac and Lancashire Cheese Bread
Celery Baked in Vinaigrette with Pancetta and Shallots
Celery Soup with Blue Cheese
Poached Pheasant with Celery
Puree of Potato and Celeriac with Garlic
Quick-Braised Celery
Slow-cooked Celery and Celeriac Soup
Carrot and Artichoke Soup
Curried Parsnip and Apple Soup with Parsnip Crisps
Parmesan-baked Parsnips
Spiced Roast Parsnip Chunks with Coriander Chutney
Oven-baked Wild Mushroom Risotto
Wild Mushroom Soup with Madeira
Wild Mushrooms in Madeira en Croûte with Foaming Hollandaise Sauce
Meat and fish
More autumn-turns-to-winter consolation in the form of the full gamut of game (grouse, mallard, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, rabbit, snipe, teal, woodcock), plus mature, free-range geese and turkeys. Look out too for wild or farmed venison and legs of British lamb big enough to make Delia's Autumn Lamb Braised in Beaujolais. Stars from the sea are: clams, cockles, cod, eel, Dover sole, grey mullet, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, langoustine, lobster, monkfish, mussels, oysters, plaice, scallops, sea bass and sea bream, skate, sprats and turbot.
Recipes to try
Other seasons and reasons
The party season cranks up with Bonfire Night (cue sausages and sparklers), Thanksgiving (cue turkey and pumpkin pie) and any old excuse for a bun fight. Slightly better for our health, this is also the start of the olive-oil harvest. Unfiltered, new season's extra virgin oil is one of life's affordable luxuries. Black-and-white truffles are in season too, but beyond most of our budgets.
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Recipes to try
