April Food

Hello there! It is April and that means real spring is here. Anybody in Scotland or Northern Ireland, of course, will be most bemused by that last sentence. Real spring means that there is plenty of wild food beginning to pop out, though cultivated fruit and vegetables are still a bit thin on the ground. It’s also the end of the game season – there’s really just rabbit and wood pigeon around, though some places have extended the game season for venison.

This month I’m going to try and concentrate on the Fish chapter – I have recently discovered an excellent company called The Fish Society. They sell all the fishy things you’d expect, plus some things that are hard to get hold of. I have made full use of this and received a big order of bloaters, smoked sprats, pike and smoked cod’s roe amongst other things. This is not to say that I have stopped going to Out of the Blue, my favourite fishmonger’s shop, it’s just that some things are not in demand.

Anyways, here’s the list of seasonal foods for April:

Vegetables: broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, spring and winter greens, lettuce, radishes, sea kale, sorrel, watercress.

Fruit: rhubarb.

Wild greens and herbs: alexanders, chickweed, chives, cow parsley (wild chervil), dandelions, fat hen, hogwood shoots, hop shoots, meadowsweet leaves, nettles, sea kale, sea spinach, sorrel, watercress, wild garlic, wild rocket.

Wild flowers and fruits: primroses

Fungi, nuts and saps: morels, St. George’s mushroom

Fish and shellfish: cockles, crab, oysters, pollack, salmon, sea trout

Game: woodpigeon, rabbit, venison.