The chef’s calendar

Seasonality

Seasonal food is the quiet backbone of good cooking. Explore Ian McAndrew’s month-by-month guides to the ingredients worth buying, cooking and enjoying at their best.

Seasonality guide

January

Probably the best time to start a new series on what is in season each month is to start at the beginning, at the start of a new year. That is the theory at least; in practice, the...

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Seasonality guide

February

If I was ever under the impression that January was a difficult month to write about, then February is not a lot easier. Still, once this bleak month (for my mind, the bleakest mon...

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Seasonality guide

March

March is a month of promise, heralding as it does the start of spring, with the guarantee of summer not that far away, almost in sight. However, there is still not a lot of produce...

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Seasonality guide

April

Suddenly, the world appears more vibrant. Lots of new produce is starting to come through now, with much of it holding the promise of the summer yet to come.

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Seasonality guide

May

May is a month of promise, tantalisingly close to abundant crops of spring vegetables but in most years just out of reach. If we are lucky, we will see quite a few early spring cro...

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Seasonality guide

June

This month should therefore be called the month of green vegetables, as they all seem to come into season almost simultaneously.

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Seasonality guide

July

Eating fresh fruit and vegetables is one of the few pleasures that we all take for granted and look at the choice we have. Where once it was a treat to find a banana or the only le...

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Seasonality guide

August

August is a bit of a strange month really, in the middle of the year with normally glorious weather, produce galore and I am now going to tell you that there is very little to writ...

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Seasonality guide

September

I imagine that for many September can be a bit of gloomy month, heralding as it does the onset of the bleaker months to come. One minute it is summer then all of a sudden, almost o...

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Seasonality guide

October

Although I don’t wish to be the harbinger of bad news I am bound to say that not only is October one of my favourite months but it is well and truly deep autumn and does unfortunat...

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Seasonality guide

November

November and the landscape is starting to take on that familiar and bleak look of winter again, the clocks have gone back, the trees are loosing their leaves and the lawnmower has ...

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Seasonality guide

December

Well, here we are, the end of another year, the calendar has come full circle, we’ve seen everything the world has to offer over the months since January. December, apart from the ...

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