On the Table: Tasty ways to bring spring into the kitchen

“How dull it would be to cook the same things all year round! And not just dull, but unwise. . .” As spring begins to bring fresh produce to the table, Cambridge Cookery MD Tine Roche embraces the turning of the culinary year

Everything springs into action this month. Corny, yes, but nevertheless there is so much spring in March - buds, lambs, ducklings and also our steps, as we start to enjoy the outdoors again.

The seasons and the cyclical pattern they provide is something to embrace, in my view. Of course we all long for blue skies and warmer weather during the darkest months of the year, but without those short, cold days the return of sunshine and warmer temperatures would not feel as joyous.

Mind you, I say that as someone who grew up in Denmark and Sweden. When I spot the first snowdrops in January, they have the same profound impact on me now as 30 years ago, when I first came to the UK. Such grace and beauty in the midst of what is often the coldest winter month seems nothing short of miraculous compared to the brown, hay-like colour of the ground in Scandinavia, where everything takes at least three months to recover from being compacted under snow and ice.

The same thing goes for the kitchen - how dull it would be to cook the same things all year round! And not just dull, but unwise from a health, budget and sustainability point of view.

Root vegetables, all of which I honour, have their time in November and December. Come January, I swap with childlike joy to crispy, bitter leaves and citrus fruit. Salads made from fennel, blood orange and a combination of all those picture-pretty Venetian raddichios in their pink, purple and acid lime hues are what gets my gut and my energy levels going.

Another bonus of bitter food, for anyone hoping to shed a few pounds, is their power to stem hunger - think Biblical exoduses: eating bitter leaves and herbs is conducive to fasting.

Bitter substances have been found to reduce our food intake and lower the rise in blood sugar after eating. In our world of not just ultra-processed food but also plant breeding for blandness, lest anything should challenge our fragile modern taste buds, bitterness is actively being bred out of many plants, with regrettable results.

February is the month of enjoying British fish for me, even if my favourite and much under-rated plaice take a deep dive to the very bottom of our seas to spawn. Other flat fish, including lemon sole, take their place. Few things are quicker or more deliciously sophisticated than a pan-fried piece of skin-on fish with a squeeze of aromatic Seville orange juice going into the pan just before the fish being plated up.

Come March - the big lull. March is the Bardo of the culinary calendar; a liminal stage where winter refuses to let go, but summer with its turbo-charged production of fruit and vegetables, has not yet begun. It is an empty pantry month, yet we hunger for the abundance of summer.

There is lamb, of course, watercress is coming through and the very first new potatoes from Cornwall or the Channel Islands are a joy. Apart from rhubarb, the kitchen guests from previous months refuse to accept that it's time to leave - yet I just don’t have any appetite for nor wish to interact with winter greens or roots come March.

I am very keen to get my hands on the first asparagus spears when they appear and tend to incorporate them in all my cooking - thinly sliced and added raw to spring salads, griddled and served with a shaving of Parmesan, steamed and dipped in runny egg. Just not boiled, please. Nothing comes from nothing and why anybody expects water to impart or improve ingredients remains a mystery to me.

Heat and fat is what transforms proteins, be they animal or plant-based. Good fats and unadulterated protein is so very good for us - and even better with a generous sprinkling of good sea salt. It is the sugar that has no merit, and it is in every single product marked fat free, low fat or X% fat.

They should be marked with a big red cross in the aisles of our supermarkets and avoided like the plague they are. Where fat goes out, the worst kind of sugar goes in. And, as salt is the unrivalled enhancer of the pantry, cheap iodine is added to almost every sweet manufactured product - cereal, cakes, biscuits, breads, sauces, stocks - much, much more than you could ever add to your home cooking.

Buy seasonal, buy local, buy wild and cook your own food - hopefully in a kitchen flooded by spring sunshine.

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