Bring a smile to everyone’s lips this month with warming, sharing dishes using the season’s premier ingredients: Vacherin Mont d’Or; lemon sole; green cabbages; leeks; chicory; apples and pears.
Click on the links for recipe ideas...
Vacherin Mont d’Or and Reblochon Two gorgeous cheeses that are only available from September and October respectively until March. Both are creamy, semi-soft cow’s milk cheeses. The first comes from Jura and the latter from Haute-Savoie (both in eastern France). Reblochon has a flowery, gentle flavour, while the more fragrant Vacherin Mont d’Or is addictively tangy. Both taste fantastic melted over lamb burgers or gratinéed vegetables such as chicory.
Lemon sole Follow the Marine Conservation Society’s advice and buy lemon sole only between September and March. It tastes wonderful fried or grilled with a lemon tarragon butter, or filleted and poached in a creamy sauce with grapes.
Green cabbages These come in all shapes and sizes at this time of year. Pointed spring cabbages are particularly sweet, while dimpled savoy cabbage leaves are ideal for stuffing – blanch and fill with a mixture of minced pork, bacon, sautéed shallots, chestnuts, herbs and lemon zest, and poach in stock.
Chicory Chicory’s succulent, mildly bitter leaves are wonderful brushed in oil and griddled or poached in orange juice, sweet dessert wine and butter. Use in robust-flavoured salads, such as a mustard-dressed green bean salad.
Leeks Leeks are really lush now, so turn them into creamy soups or blanch them and serve in salads with quail’s eggs, bacon and a tarragon cream dressing or walnuts, watercress and chicory.
Apples and pears It’s worth looking out for British-grown fruit such as cox’s and braeburn apples and concorde, comice and conference pears. They’re deliciously sweet, and are perfect for both sweet and savoury salads. Use tart cooking apples such as bramleys for frothy snows, fools and pies.
More seasonal ingredients...