Seasonal Food: February
February 1st, 2007 by Scott |
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Note: This article is the first in a new series, whereby Seasonal Food is highlighted at the start of each month, hopefully enabling people to buy and eat fresh produce.
February is a perculiar month – and a fairly miserable one, too. With Christmas’s festivities and the New Year’s celebrations firmly behind us, this is the time of year when we truly begin to get fed up with all the cold weather.
Where the start of Winter brings exciting promises of comfort food and snow, by February we’ve settled on the fact that really all we can expect are more grey skies. Depressing, to say the least.
February this year (at least where I live, in the North of England) is also a little suprising; due to the warm Winter, Spring’s flower shoots can already be seen poking out from the soil. Global warming, or just a temperature “blip”? Time will tell.
- In terms of food, there’s not an awful lot happening at this time of year either. All of Christmas’s vegetables such as Cabbage, Celeriac and Sprouts can still be found, and a few others are in mid-season – notably the Endive (Chicory) and Leeks.
- Of course fruits are nothing but a dream at the moment, and the Apple season is behind us – but you may be lucky in finding the years early Forced Rhubarb – with a more delicate taste than the naturally grown variety.
- Winter’s Game season has just finished, but of course that means you should be ok to buy any number of Pheasants for the next week or so – or longer, if the butcher has some in the freezer. You’ll also find your local fishmonger stocking Crab, Mussels and Oysters for a good while yet.
In summary, while the weather may be depressing and we’re all secretly hoping for Spring to come along a little faster (or at least some real Winter weather, with snow and suchlike), we can still george ourselves with a selection of Shellfish before finishing it all off with Rhubarb Crumble…So it isn’t all bad, is it?
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A great idea, although I’m sure you’ll have some Asian readers running round looking for British seasonal produce! At least you probably have seasons up North – down here in London just about every product is available all year round these days. Game is an exception though – I’ve not been able to get venison outside the strict season despite having tried this year.
This is a great idea for a monthly post! I love to cook seasonally when I can (for example, I’m trying to use up a net of Seville oranges at present!) and am looking forward to the Rhubarb hitting the shops!
Trig: I’m sure everything is available all year round due to imports. The point is though – things taste better when they’re fresh, and they’re going to be freshest when they’ve been grown locally (less “Food Miles”).
Great point about my international readers, though…I’ll have to give that a bit of thought.
Freya: Thanks – I certainly find that it helps me to know what is fresh and when. It means I don’t miss out on any of those things I look forward to so much!
Ah, yes, thanks for the reminder – I’ll have to get myself some pheasant before it all goes. I also haven’t indulged in shellfish for a while – I’ll have to change that.
Ros: I still haven’t had any crab this season yet, so I’m going to have to get myself some, too. See you at the fishmongers!
Great idea for a series! And yes, it is difficult to put too much emphasis on seasonal posts when half your readers may be in another hemisphere (or even just a different continent). But I guess as they say, write what you know. There are plenty of other blogs catering to other climates and cuisines where readers could find out about, say, Thai seasonal produce. This time of year is a bit blah, isn’t it, but as you say – gorge on shellfish while the months still have Rs in them!
Jeanne: I’d never noticed the “r” trend before. Strange that all the summer months have no r in the name!
I love this idea! Keep it coming!
Hiya Scott, greetings from So California
I like the idea of cooking “seasonal” foods when they’re at the freshest peak of the season. Let me recaputure what I’ve eaten so far. Hmm..from winter to early spring, fresh black cods, fresh shellfish ie. dungeness crabs, mud crabs, is really great. On the vege side, I’ve already taken the pleasure on some exotic belly-button-looking chinese mushroom stir-fry, a known benevolent mushroom, and some other chinese mustard greens. Well, Chinese NewYear is just round the corner, on the 18th., and the only “seasonal” food the chinese eating here is gonna be abalone, sea cucumber soup *lol* And, for the Americans, probably another Carl’s Jr Burger, tons of Valentine’s Day Chocoholicssss *grins*, and not forgetting the time of the year again, super bowl on the 4th., there goes the pizzas and beers 
Magpie: I certainly will – tweaking as I go to improve it.
MeltingWok: I’m looking forward to Chinese New Year too – my local restaurant does a special thing with some firecrackers etc which we go to every year – I’ll see if I can grab a few photos this tme around.
February is kind of between and dreary, isn’t it. Last year I planted out some lettuce sets in a sunny corner…oh, wait, that was March…Patience!
Katie: February certainly gets lost in the mix! I do rather like it one or the other – either nice and snowy cold, or sunny with promises of spring. February tends to bring neither – just grey skies
Scott, that’s great, do they do the lion dance too ? Yes, do snap some photographs and share it with us here, cheers !
MeltingWok: Unfortunately no lion dancing – but if we’re lucky there will be some fortune cookies. Haha, fortune cookies and firecrackers is about as flashy as it gets. Still, for my little town, it’s something special.
[...] This is the second part of an ongoing series (of which this is the first) of posts highlighting seasonal food, which should hopefully help you in finding fresh [...]
[...] This is the second part of an ongoing series (of which this is the first) of posts highlighting seasonal food, which should hopefully help you in finding fresh [...]