Cooking Outside the Box: The Abel and Cole Seasonal, Organic Cookbook. Keith Abel

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       Spring

      Having endured the British winter, the first days of spring really are a godsend. Only those who inhabit this wonderful island can appreciate what it’s like to wake up when it’s not dark, and enjoy the dawning realisation that the feeling on your skin is the sunshine that you haven’t seen for five months. Then your last doubts are cast away when you see the beginnings of cherry blossom on the trees and the daffs opening up. It’s time to dust down the Johnny Cash records again. Yep, the winter freight train just left town.

      Unfortunately Mother Nature takes a little longer to recover from the months of darkness and damp in the fields. On the British organic farm, the overwintered crops planted in the autumn and grown all the way through winter start drying up. At the same time, the early-planted crops you’re going to enjoy in the summertime are still unrecognisable little things battling for some soil alongside all the weeds. This is why the period from around March through until as late as June has been called the “Hungry Gap”.

      Maybe our forebears invented spring cleaning because there was bugger all going on in the vegetable garden and they couldn’t watch Little Britain! This of course has many implications for the kitchen, so it’s a great time for the seasonal cook to clear out the freezer and dust down the tins and packets at the back of the larder.

      It should also be noted that the produce we do get through the spring is grown by the bold and the brave and I spend a lot of time traipsing around the country trying to persuade our growers to have crops ready for this difficult time. Small producers will have a much steadier bank balance if they grow crops in spring for the summer, rather than attempting to take Mother Nature head-on and grow things through the winter months for harvest over the Hungry Gap. Put yourself in their muddy boots: it’s really difficult to stretch out the growing seasons without chemicals or sunshine and obviously if things go wrong they can lose the whole crop. So if your spring greens at this time are a little yellow on the outside leaves, spare a thought for the brave farmer who took the risk and grew them and enjoy them just the same.

      Nonetheless, we need to be honest about this season: it’s a tough one, but with a precious few delightful treats (like purple sprouting broccoli, rhubarb and curly kale) mixed in with the other produce that may need a bit of inspiration in the kitchen. So, as this is also a great time of year to use up those things at the back of the larder and at the bottom of the freezer, I’ve tried to include some dust-gathering favourites in this chapter.

      Spring is the season for…

      purple sprouting broccoli asparagus rhubarb spinach leeks Jerusalem artichokes carrots

      Hearty Lemon Chicken Soup with Purple Sprouting Broccoli

      This is a variation of the traditional Greek soup avgolemeno. The addition of purple sprouting broccoli gives the soup an extra burst of flavour and colour. Equally delicious with the chicken skipped and the stock replaced with a vegetable stock.

       SERVES 4

       1 glug olive oil

       2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

       1 onion, peeled and chopped

       400g (140z) chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces

       2 or 3 mugs of purple sprouting broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces

       4 mugs of chicken stock

       2 eggs

       Juice of 1–2 lemons

       1 mug of cooked white long grain rice

       Salt and freshly СКАЧАТЬ