Autumn calling

As temperatures begin to take a seasonal dip, Rose Prince has been tempted back into the kitchen. A September bounty of field mushrooms, blackberries and squash awaits. Photography by Beth Evans. Food and prop styling by Olivia Bennett

Rose Prince makes the most of the season

I THINK OF SEPTEMBER as a cook’s serious season: serious amounts of seriously extraordinary food. A time when you can choose between wild mushrooms and anything from the squash family, when the musty flavours of grapes and pears can be exploited to their utmost in your cooking, or when the very first game birds are ready to pluck and hedgerows start to give up their wild fruits.

Following a summer of heat and dust, my mood is caught by harvest time and a strong instinct to focus a little more time on cooking than I have in recent weeks. When the kitchen seemed hotter than an engine room, it was all I could do to throw a salad together for lunch, but now making an effort feels right, as if in homage to the bringing in of September’s crop of beautiful things.

We are told that it is going to be a remarkable season for English wine, and my thoughts turn to using grapes in recipes. If you live near a vineyard, beg,

borrow or steal a bunch of wine grapes to add to a fruity chicken braise. They have thinner skins than table grapes and almost melt into the juices. If not, there is a much greater variety of the dessert type available now, with flavours of strawberry, mango and even candy floss that will work very well with this dish.

The promised extra time I’ve spent in the kitchen cooking prompts a spell making a fine-textured savoury tart that is packed to the brim with fat field mushrooms, whose flavours are then exposed wonderfully by eggs and cream. You can adapt this to include some wild chanterelles or other edible wild fungi, should you have a decent supply of them.

Squash are flooding into greengrocers and supermarkets in all their painterly variety – they truly are the tulip of food plants. Yet in addition to their pretty exteriors, the texture of their flesh is just as diverse. I love the fibrous acorn squash, especially when drenched in spiced butter, but then why not go the extra mile and make a few chapattis with a fresh yogurt and herb chutney for a feast that says everything good about the season – and Britain, too.

I can’t finish without talking about pudding. September heralds a spell of ‘puddings proper’ – of crumbles and warm sponges harbouring orchard fruit and eaten with yellow cream. Nostalgically, I plump for a fudgy bread pudding instead, that my mother would make from her pink Constance Spry cookbook. It has an unusual, delicate texture and is completely perfect eaten with blackberries – in fact, seriously good. Seriously.