What the experts say
In praise of British strawberries “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did,” wrote the 17th century physician Dr William Butler. And how right he was, says Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. Strawberries are, in this country, “less a fruit than an icon” – and to eat them in the summer, ideally outdoors and with cream, is to partake in a ritual as “quintessentially British as tea or queuing”. Strawberries were first cultivated in Europe in the 1300s, but “the species looked different back then – more akin to the teeny wild strawberries which continue to grow in English hedgerows and woodlands”. Plump “modern” varieties didn’t arrive until the 19th century, when the “Virginia strawberry was brought to England from across the pond and cross-bred with a larger South American variety”. The British strawberry season used to last only six weeks, but thanks largely to the new cultivars bred at the East Malling Research Station in Kent – the epicentre of strawberry production – it now extends throughout the summer. And so, for months, we can “gorge with abandon” on this “universal crowd-pleaser”.
Can a veg patch save you money? Growing your own seems a sensible way to “get around a cost-of-living crisis”, said Eleanor Steafel in The Daily Telegraph. So it’s no surprise that retailers are reporting
booming sales of kits and seeds. But is there economic logic to this trend? Can a veg patch save you money? Most experts agree that it is possible – but only if you choose your crops carefully, and are willing to put in quite a bit of work. They advise avoiding most “common-or-garden veg”, such as onions, potatoes, cauliflowers and cabbages. These don’t always yield a crop, and are still pretty cheap to buy in shops. Courgettes, on the other hand, are a “winner”: just two or three plants will feed a family from mid-July to the first frost (and if you turn them into batches of pasta sauce or soup, “you can fill your freezer” too). It’s also worth trying tomatoes, French and runner beans, blackberries and raspberries, as well as cut-and-come-again salads and herbs, which offer excellent “gram-for-gram value”, being relatively easy to grow and taking up little space. A pack of seeds costing £2 will keep you in salad for weeks. Or, if you don’t fancy growing lettuce from seed, said The Sun, just cut the top off a cos lettuce and put the base in a dish of shallow water: it should start to regrow within three days.
A secret passion for salad cream Salad cream has long been “regarded as irredeemably naff”, says Tim Hayward in the FT – “a poor man’s substitute for mayonnaise”. Yet it was once considered the height of sophistication: when Heinz launched its mass-produced version in 1914 (the first product the company aimed solely at the British market), they targeted it at the gentry. “Lucy Honeychurch would have loved it” – and rightly so, because with its predominant flavours of mustard and vinegar, salad cream is actually rather “grown-up”. For an easy way to appreciate its virtues, hard boil half a dozen eggs, then cool, peel, and halve them and remove the yolks. Mash the yolks with salad cream, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, a pinch of curry powder and some chopped chives, then pipe the mixture back into the half whites. Every time I’ve served this at a dinner party, “guests claw at the plate in unbridled greed”.