Spring comes rather late to the kitchen. While the gardens, greenhouses and allotments are fizzing with seedlings and opening buds, anyone who likes to cook seasonally has no alternative but to muddle through March with what are essentially winter vegetables and fruit. Still, there are some great cauliflowers around for baking under paprika-freckled cheese sauces or for simmering into a fine, ivory soup. I rang the changes instead, frying the creamy-white florets into a crisp, spiced batter to eat with a smooth paste of tahini and mint.
I brought back purple-sprouting from the shops, too. So good it deserved a proper hollandaise, beaten to a deep buttery yellow, which is exactly what it got. Another day, I dropped a handful of the purple tips and green stalks into deep boiling water for barely more than a minute, drained them, then flashed them into a pan of hot, shallow olive oil, grated lemon zest and chopped green olives. They were even better piled on to thick sourdough, the juices trickled over the hot toast.
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