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A plum month for fresh ingredients
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Fruit
Vegetables
Meat and fish
Other seasons and reasons
September is the month for juicy plums and some outstanding apple varieties, arriving even earlier this year due to all the hot weather we've been having. Markets are overflowing with Mediterranean-type veggies such as aubergines and peppers and, says Dee McQuillan, it's also time for hill lamb, mussels, oysters and much more...
Fruit
- Blackberries are the stars of the start of September and seem to be especially sweet and juicy this year – brambles are the smaller Scottish equivalent. Get out your basket and go gathering!
- This is also the time of year to enjoy plenty of plums and to try to secure some damsons for preserves and other purposes.
- This year's hot summer means that apples will be in the shops earlier this year. The first to arrive are Beauty of Bath and the more commercial Discovery. These are followed – if you are lucky –by the stupendous old-school apple called Worcester Pearmain. Bramleys should arrive towards the end of the month and, of course, the Cox's Orange Pippin season has been brought forward (this used to be an October apple).
- If you are a market-stall shopper you should find lovely cheap gluts of peaches and nectarines, but the only import that competes with home-grown fruit for excitement is dark and (hopefully) soft figs from Turkey and other Mediterranean countries. You get more fruit but less joy from a pomegranate.
Recipes to try
Vegetables
- The vegetables we think of as Mediterranean are excellent and cheap at the moment, especially aubergines, green and red peppers and big Marmande-type tomatoes. Ratatouille does not have to be the only word to leap to mind – try Delia's Sicilian Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Aubergines too.
- It's also sweetcorn time – it's at its best when it's freshly picked. We have cooking instructions on the site and a terrific Toasted Sweetcorn Salsa.
- Still in abundance are fennel, artichokes and herbs. Home-grown runner beans generally run out within the first week of September, but round bobby beans continue, and you may find imported borlotti and canellini beans are stocked by particularly enterprising greengrocers.
- The weather dictates the arrival of wild mushrooms: when it is cool and damp they do their stuff and mushroom-up overnight. Chanterelles from beech woods are a special, early-season delicacy.
- Pink Fir Apple potatoes and the expensive French summer potatoes (La Ratte, Roseval, Belle de Fontenay) that arrived in August are still around and still delicious.
Recipes to try
Meat and fish
- At this time of year, butchers and supermarkets make a great effort to bring us hill or light lamb, which is still small and sweet. We also have on the site the perfect answer to a bigger leg of lamb from a larger lowland breed: Delia's Autumn Lamb Braised in Beaujolais.
- While we wait for the pheasants' time to be up, those non-game (meaning mostly farmed) game birds – the guinea fowl and tiny quail – are good right now.
- Traditionalists say that the bivalves are back on form, and you know what – they are right. Mussels and oysters are delicious after a summer rest, for both them and us. Tiny brown shrimps (Morecambe Bay) are in season too.
- Fish-wise you should be able to get anything you want from the sea, except herring from the English fishery. If you see glittering fresh plump pilchards, adapt any sardine or sprat recipe to cook them.
Recipes to try
Other seasons and reasons
- With the return to school and school meals it may be a good idea to serve a few salads for supper – the leaves and salad vegetables will remain in good supply. Visit our salad recipe collection for ideas.
- If you are that way inclined, now is the time to make raspberry and blackberry/bramble jams or jellies, spiced pickled runner beans and any preserves using peppers and aubergines. Keen cooks will be planning the opening of the chutney campaign, seeking out bargain-priced boxes of onions and the crispest cauliflowers, and stockpiling vinegar.
Recipes to try
