Festive dinner alert as weather ruins veg

BROWN cauliflowers and wonky sprouts are on the menu after flooding decimated Christmas crops.

Supermarkets and greengrocers are having to sell substandard vegetables after crops were ruined by last month’s floods, which left many vegetables unpicked.

Vernon Mascarenhas, a vegetable supplier at New Covent Garden Market who works with many of London’s top restaurants, said chefs have complained as all his cauliflowers are brown.

He said: “We were getting complaints that the cauliflowers weren’t pure white, and they were washed over with mud and they were discoloured because of that.”

Mr Mascarenhas added that the taste and quality of the cauliflowers was unchanged, they just looked slightly discoloured.

The sprout crop was particularly affected by the flooding this year, with farmers reporting up to 30 per cent going unharvested.

Waitrose has had to relax its size and shape guidelines in order to fulfil orders, and shoppers are going to be faced with a mixed bag.

Lucy Broughton, sprouts buyer at Waitrose & Partners, added: “Love them or hate them, Brussels have had a tricky year, but our farmers have worked hard to make the best of a bad spate of weather.

“Whilst they might not be perfect in appearance, the quality and flavour is superb and some of the more rough around the edges ones will be in prepared products.”

The average sprout size is around 40mm circumference, but Waitrose will now be selling sprouts as small as 15mm and as large as 60mm.

Usually, sprouts that are not perfectly round are thrown away, but this year lopsided vegetables will be on the dinner table.

And Christmas Day won’t signal the end of Britain’s vegetable issues because of the floods with spring vegetable shortages expected, too.