• In season now: May

    New this month: Asparagus! The food of gods... and carrots are back.

    Still in season from last month: cauliflower, chard, green cabbage, salad leaves, main-crop potatoes (from store), salad leaves, sea kale, spring greens, rhubarb

    Goodbye till next year to: Purple sprouting broccoli (sniff, sniff), leeks, stored parsnips, forced rhubarb

  • What I’m doing here

    This all started when I picked the first strawberries from my new allotment.

    I'd never been so enraptured or so excited by food. It was a shock to find that anything could taste so good.

    So what - I'd never had strawberries before?

    No - all the strawberries I'd had were shop-bought, like as not flown in from intensive growers in Spain or Chile, and eaten in winter when strawberries should be a distant summer memory.

    It revolutionised my thinking about the fresh food we eat every day. I started to wonder if you got the same amazing taste from all types of food grown and eaten in season. And then I decided to do something about it.

    The Year of Eating Seasonally is my little experiment to find out what it's really like not to have it all. The only fruit and veg I and my family are going to eat in 2008 will be what's growing in the ground at the time (or, in winter, what I can get out of store).

    I want to find out if the hungry gap is really as hungry as everyone says it is: whether you're really eating nothing but cabbage all winter; and whether you miss strawberries in December.

    Along the way I hope I'll save a few tons of carbon being released into the atmosphere on my behalf, as I won't be requiring those French beans flown from Chile, thanks very much. And I hope I'll be rediscovering what food can really taste like.

    If you have any comments, please feel free to post them anywhere you like - or you can email me at sallywhite@hotmail.com.

Spring (greens) chicken

The ultimate in fast food: this ultra-tasty dish took me half an hour to cook, from a standing start to putting it on the plate. And I wasn’t even hurrying…

2 tbsps olive oil

4 free range chicken breasts, either whole or diced

1 medium onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped finely

1 tsp mixed herbs

2 tbsps honey

2 tbsps wholegrain mustard

7oz (200g) spring greens, sliced into ribbons

3 tbsps single cream

Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the chicken. Fry on one side until browned – about 10 minutes.

Add the onions, garlic and mixed herbs. Turn the chicken over (or give it a stir if it’s diced) and pour over the honey-and-mustard mix. Cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes.

Add the spring greens, then cover with a lid and allow to cook for another 5 minutes or so until the greens have wilted. If you’re using whole chicken pieces, remove them now and put them on the plates (if not, just leave it in the pan). Stir the cream into the greens mixture and season with salt and pepper; then spoon over the chicken pieces on the plates. Tastes great with mashed potato, or rice.

One Response

  1. aspirantlocavore, on March 17th, 2008 at 6:51 am Said:

    this recipe sounds delicious! and the fact that I can be done in under half an hour appeals, as well as the fact that it only uses one frying pan. it sounds similar to a recipe i already use but which takes a lot longer. can’t wait to try it. thanks! ;)

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