Seasonal Fruit Topics

Although the first British strawberries are getting on to M&S and Waitrose shelves, most strawberries are now from Spain and Morocco with prices already tumbling for 600g packs of standard varieties: yours for £2.50-3.00, widely available (may need help with flavour). Talking of flavour, I would love to find that I can eat fresh strawberries, […]

Conference and Rocha are the only pears available in all retailers at this time of year. Conference is the nation’s favourite pear, familiar to everyone and available all year round from UK, Holland and Belgium. Rocha, on the other hand, is a bit of an unsung hero: the pride of Portugal, this small round pear

Green grapes are either late or stored varieties from South Africa and Chile, or Thompson Seedless from India. Thompson Seedless is a good grape, a mainstay of many producing countries for many years, but relatively unexciting. For the best, look for a lovely light-yellow straw colour. For something a little different, look for Autumn Crisp

I rarely mention Kent mangoes as, most of the time, they are decent but unexciting. I’m looking for flavour and, due to sea-freighting as much as varietal traits, they rarely offer much more than sweetness. For the last month or two, Kent mangoes from Peru have been pretty much the only choice in supermarkets, but

Just dwelling on my fruit grazing habit and realised that, at the moment, I’m constantly drawn to the plum bowl: they are really impressive as the South African and Chilean seasons enter their latter stages. Sadly, my plum bowl is arranged in little mountains, each a different variety to taste as they soften. The laetitia

Spanish Navels are wonderful right now and have a lovely acid balance that brings out their best flavour: Lane Late is the main variety. For fantastic fresh juice, buy Spanish Salustiana. These are a ‘blond’ orange and have a high juice content with a mild eating quality: great value. Pigmented ‘blood’ oranges are also still

Every retailer has a number of favourite and tasty alternative apple varieties to the main choices on sale everywhere. A great one to look out for at the moment is Envy: a New Zealand variety, grown in UK and offering a lovely crisp texture and balanced flavour (in M&S, Sainsbury’s & Waitrose). Other retailer favourites

Blueberries: The cross-over between the Chilean and Moroccan blueberry seasons is underway. Most stores continue with late-shipped Chilean fruit, but some of this, particularly at the cheaper end of the spectrum, is mixed with unpleasantly soft berries: a pity for this wonderful fruit. Moroccan and Spanish fruit is appearing in the main retailers (seen in