Is eating foods in season out of date?

We used to call the third month of the year the long, hungry month of March.

Typically, winter stores of meat and preserves would have dwindled by the end of February, when the weather was seriously harsh. Even salted and cured fish placed in stores in November and December would be running low.

People had to ration rood pending the return of ocean harvests and summer gardens. For sure, that was a long time ago (50 years at least), but these days – with changing lifestyles, improvements in food storage and the advent of food banks and the like – very few are left rationing nowadays.

While I was ordering my usual ‘lockdown’ shopping on the weekend – the last day in February – I realised I was choosing foods that none of our forebears could have bought. On my list were autumnal squash and slightly more wintry sweet potatoes, punnets of raspberries, strawberries and mango chunks, along with fresh coriander, dill and tarragon. Being a sucker for Mediterranean- and Middle-Eastern-based dishes, I also threw in avocados and chickpeas. None of these foods would have been in circulation back then.

History tells us that food shortages is not a consumer choice. While the locavore movement comes as close as it can to following the seasons, locavores do their best to follow a seasonal, local and aesthetic approach to cooking but they stop well short of jeopardising their own health (and that of their families) when produce is thin on the ground.

I buy tonnes of foods from farmer markets for the quality and the freshness. I am not a locavore as described. I buy in-season when I can and out-of-season when I can’t. What I will not do is make in-season dishes that are out-of-season.  

This means I don’t plate strawberries with ice cream in winter, nor beef stews in summer. I don’t overuse stone fruits (peaches, apricots and plums) in spring, nor grapefruits or rhubarb in autumn (rhubarb crumbles included). If I have a hankering for sweet strawberries in the dead of winter, I dip them in bitter dark chocolate instead. If I am suffering from too many savoury, salty, umami dishes in the autumn, I roast some butternut squash, carrots and sweet potatoes with a few segments of grapefruit. In both of these examples, the dish feels seasonally ‘right’ (wintry, autumnal), with an accent of out-of-season tastes (fresh, sour).  

I have some exceptions to the principles of eating seasonal and local: the Moro variety of Blood Oranges for one. For them to ‘blush’ they require the night temperature to drop to -1 or -2°C for at least an hour. This means that over 24 hours there is a swing of nearly 20 degrees between day and night. The fiercer the winter, the more sweet and red they are. It is almost impossible to buy Blood Oranges all year-round, so when they hit the big markets like the New Covent Garden Market and the family-ran Italian cafes, I grab them when I can. If you haven’t tried this fruit before, look for recipes like Roast Chicken with Blood Oranges, Fennel and Ricotta Cheesecake with Blood Orange Compote and a Blood Orange Chocolate Tart pictured on Pinterest created by Lani Greenhalgh.