Seasonal Fruit Topics

UK strawberries are in great shape at the moment. All varieties are delivering some sweetness, with Eve’s Delight, Sweet Eve and Murano being the latest varieties in many stores. Quality is good, time from harvest to supermarket shelf at a minimum and the sun is shining (in most places!). Pay a bit extra for premium […]

Grapes are a real mixture at the moment as retailers wait for the Mediterranean season to get properly underway. Quality is mixed as much of the offer is tail-end of season from South America and India. On the whole, the actual berries should be fine, but often the stems are dried and there is a

Plums are a fruit that can be so delicious that you want to keep eating them. At best, they are sweet, succulent, juicy and full of flavour: a delight to eat. However, all too often plums are disappointing, which is a pity. To an extent, this is because retailers try to keep plums on the

Plums: The South African plum season is well underway with the early season black and red varieties such as Pioneer, Sapphire, Souvenir, Purple Majesty and Black Splendour. Also available are yellow plums, such as Sunkiss and a number of newer varieties which make ad hoc appearances in retailers. All these varieties are good to eat

Do you recognise the names Evelina, Ambrosia, Envy, Kanzi, Cameo, Opal,  Rubens, Smitten, Pink Lady, Jazz, etc? What about Cox, Braeburn, Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith  or Empire? Or even, Cripps Pink, Scifresh, Civni, Caudle or Pinova? These are all names of apples used at various times for varieties regularly sold through British grocers: confusing,

September and October are, perhaps, the best months of the year for apples. Not only are they mostly freshly harvested from British and European orchards, but there is a huge choice of varieties available before we settle into the retailers’ standard winter ranges. There are the early varieties such as Discovery, which don’t store well,

Two wonderful fruits from Spain that are now in season are persimmons and cherimoya. The former is becoming familiar to the British fruit lover, and easily available; but the latter, while popular in Spain, is still largely ignored in UK. Both of these fruit epitomise the best of the Mediterranean and are worthy of any

While figs are available most of the year from around the world, they tend to be a rather expensive delicacy. However, September is the time to take advantage of the huge supply of Black Bursa figs from Turkey. Bursa figs are wonderful fruit, especially when they are perfectly mature: plump, soft, sweet and full of

In stores, there are some lovely sweet, crisp new season grapes from Mexico, Egypt and Morocco such as Flame Seedless and Early Sweet. However, with the exception of Brazilian Vitoria (in M&S, Morrisons and Waitrose), there has been a lack of black varieties with real flavour. Change is upon us, as varieties such as Sable