Fruit and Mushroom with John
One day buying fruit and the kilos are mounting up. Mara de Bois strawberries are now super sweet whilst frais de bois are too fragile. True French greengages have started with the usual mini-mum of 18% sugar, huge difference between those and the false varieties. Mirabelles have started from Alsace and look good for first sendings, yellow with some red flecking. Star of the regular plums are the Red Saphire and the Sunkiss gold from Spain. Early Guyot in green and some blush plus some Red Williams herald the start of the European pear season.. All firm but the Guyot have a nasty habit of ripening as you look at them. First of the hazelnuts (noisettes) in green husks have started and we near the end of the fresh green almonds. There is a world wide shortage of lem- ons and I think the organic full colour unwaxed from Sicily offer true value. There are still some decent Euro-pean cherries about that have more flavor than those from North America but do not look as stunning. Peach and nectarine are set to continue with great quality. Salusti-ana juicing oranges from Argentina have at long last arrived, this is our favourite variety for flavor and yield. Spanish black figs continue to improve and the famous black figs from Pont de Sollies should be out in time for the next news letter. That's it happy fruit eating!!
Vegetable and Salad with Matthieu
Crapaudine beetroot (as pic-tured) has started, often thought of as the finest of all beetroots. The ready cooked version will be ready in the middle of August. The trays of mixed carrots from our farmer in Sarthe are excellent with yellow, white, violet and round (Parisienne) making up a great selection in a 5 kilo box. Broad leaf chard and whole clump young chard are now both readily available and arrive in the market daily. There is a nice range of edible flowers now but best to let us select on the day. Basic herbs in bunches are now at their very best, you can smell them very easily as you walk into the growers pavilion. The choice of tomatoes is incredible from heirloom to special single varieties. Celeriac continues to improve and parsnips from the Loire valley are in evi-dence. Smoked garlic is cur-rently one of the best samples we have ever seen and the Red Label Rose of Lautrec
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