Seasonal pleasures

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A couple of days ago, I found myself part of a conversation between two local women, and Confirmed Batchelor. Confirmed Batchelor does very well for himself: he grows lots of his own veg., makes scores of pots of jam every year, and generally cooks and caters. But he’d just upset my two friends.
‘You WHAT? You bought TOMATOES? At THIS time of year? What FOR?’
They both had a real go at him. Why buy out-of-season fruit and vegetables when there’s plenty else to choose from, maturing naturally every month of the year? Why buy stuff that’s been air-freighted who knows how far, or that’s been forced into ripeness against its will under glass and polythene, so that it’s big, it’s colourful, but it’s also anaemic in flavour and cottony in texture? My friends were quite clear about it. Local stuff, bought in season, made far more sense to them.

The women pleading the case so eloquently for foods in season were not paid up members of the chattering classes, reared on the foodie pages of the Sunday supplements. They were just ordinary working women who’d been brought up to be thoughtful about the food they put on the family table. Here, it’s very common to grow at least a few vegetable in the garden, and it’s easier for almost anybody to be aware of what’s in season and what isn’t

And so the longer I’m here, the less likely I am to follow Confirmed Batchelor’s example and buy tomatoes in February. Every Friday at Lavelanet market, I’m at Christophe’s bio (organic) vegetable stall, seeing what he’s harvested this week at his market garden 10 miles or so down the road. There’s always a long queue, so it’s quite likely that the woman in front of me will get chatting and offer her favourite spinach recipe, and we’ll swap tips. I’ll have time to ponder the various merits of celeriac, or parsnips (almost unknown here in France until we English introduced the idea a few years back), or chard, or crinkly savoy cabbage, or black winter radish, or caterpillar-green romanesco, or tiny new season turnips. I’ll choose seasonal salads of bitter leaves and lambs lettuce and rocket.

Elsewhere in the market, or in the supermarket, I could buy aubergines, courgettes, even strawberries, but I don’t even consider it. I prefer watching the seasons slowly change, week by week, as I wait my turn for Christophe’s freshly picked crops.

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