This Month

If you want to find out more about growing your own fruit and vegetables, keeping hens or bees or making your own cheese and bread and much more, visit Our Little Green Book of Home Grown Harvests

Strictly speaking, lamb should only be called lamb if the animal was born on or after 1 January. If it has survived the winter, then it is called hogget – its firm, flavourful flesh is quite different to the soft, milky, subtle flavour of new season lamb.

Lamb is mostly fed on grass, giving it a well-rounded flavour. However, you can now buy lamb from Shetland, whose flavour is reminiscent of the heather in its diet or salt-marsh lamb from the Gower Peninsula whose seaweed-rich diet gives the meat a gently iodised flavour.

At one time each region had its own breed, bred specifically to adapt to its environment such as the Derbyshire Gritstone, a hillside breed from the Peak District; or Portland lamb, its earthy flavour coming from the chalk- and clay-based Dorset soil. However, these indigenous breeds were smaller and slower to fatten, which doesn’t sit well with the commercially-aware farmer. If you do want to source tastier native breeds for a real treat, search FoodFinds for your nearest supplier.

For more on Spring Lamb - where to buy, rare breeds, butchery classes and much more, visit Our Little Green Book on Lamb

Cook in season
Slow Roast Lamb
Lamb Cutlets Reform

For chocolate to be a real treat, it must be the good stuff. And, as with anything, it’s worth spending a bit of money on. Artisan producers across the country are now making quality chocolates that demand to be savoured and enjoyed, rather than crammed in as a mealtime substitute.

We forget that chocolate is actually made from a fruit – the cocoa bean – with all the depth of flavour that implies. By the time the cocoa bean is masked in sugar and fat to make what one might term ‘industrial’ chocolate, there is no hint of the refined flavours that one might discover in an artisanal bar.

One should always look for a higher percentage of cocoa solids for better quality – dark chocolate should contain a minimum of 60% and milk chocolate 30%. There should be no vegetable fat other than cocoa butter.

For more on our favourite artisan chocolate makers and shops, notes on how to taste chocolate, recipes and much more, visit our Little Green Book - Dipping into British Chocolate

Purple sprouting broccoli is one of spring’s early treats. You can find it with either dark purple or, more unusually, pale yellow white florets, as a colourful precursor to the later asparagus. And it should be greeted with no less fanfare as it breaks the tedium of the winter root vegetables.

When buying it, look for firm, vivid green stalks and leaves with no signs of yellowing or drooping and there should be no sulphurous odour, so off-putting in stale brassicas. Try to cook it as soon as you can – although it will keep for a few days in the fridge, it really is at its best as fresh as possible. Either boil it in salted water for 3-5 minutes, until just tender or simply steam it.

Purple sprouting broccoli can take all manner of good strong flavours. Try it with hollandaise, just as you would with asparagus, but it also pairs well with anchovy, garlic, chilli, lemon and black olives. Make a simple anchovy and garlic dressing by ‘melting’ anchovy fillets in a pan in a little oil with some sliced garlic before pouring over the broccoli.

Buy your Purple Sprouting Broccoli from FoodLovers Approved Producers