Pickled Pear, Hazelnut, Chickpea, Quinoa And Blue Cheese Salad
House & Garden/ Carole Bamford
As we turn the corner into September, so the season of the pear commences, allowing us to ride all the way through to January on its sweet and crunchy coattails. There are many ways to enjoy these beauties, but we especially love pairing them with salty, savoury flavours. Carole Bamford’s salad fits the bill to perfection, teaming the firm pears with creamy yet tangy blue cheese and highlighting texture with a scattering of hazelnuts. The perfect salad for a light lunch with friends or to batch make for a couple of days’ worth of quick, easy and healthy bites. Get the recipe.
Figs With Pine Nuts And Goats’ Curd
Jamie Oliver
We have grown accustomed to being able to shop for any fruit or veg a recipe requires with a single trip to our local supermarket. And yet there are many reasons to try and stick to seasonal produce where we can, not least for the fact that they will be at their ripest, best and tastiest. And that goes triple when it comes to the fleeting joy of figs. Out of season, they are routinely tasteless and disappointing; conversely, caught within the few weeks between late summer and early autumn, they are the sweetest and juiciest of all fruits, all the more alluring for their ephemeral delights. During this time, we advocate keeping them simple to let them sing, and Jamie’s recipe, with pine nuts and goats’ curd, is ideal. Simply griddle the figs, toast and scatter some pine nuts for texture, spoon creamy goat’s curd and drizzle honey to bring out the sweetness. The perfect early autumn bite. Get the recipe.
Squid Stew
Olive Magazine
Autumn is all about cosy evenings eating comforting stews by firesides. It is still a bit early in the season for all that, but nonetheless we do like this bridging recipe, which brings together some flavours of the summer in the form of seafood and rich tomatoes while also delivering in the comfort stakes too. It also happens to be a good time of year to eat squid, since late summer/ early autumn is the best time for line-fishing, which thus minimises overfishing. Cook this one long and slow and revel in the beautifully intense flavours, which are best soaked up with a hunk of toasted sourdough. Get the recipe.
Tomato Manchego Tart
Olive Magazine
We so closely associate tomatoes with summer on the Med that we sometimes forget that the season is still in swing until October. If you have a glut, there is no nicer way to use it up than with this spectacular tart, which packs in intense (and intensely delicious) flavour, in part thanks to salting the tomatoes before baking. A great lunch for friends, we’d serve it with a green salad and a crisp glass of white wine. Get the recipe.
Plum Tart Tartin
Jamie Oliver
Plums are one of our favourite fruits of the season, offering up the perfect balance between the sweet and the tart. We adore Jamie’s ultra-simple plum tart tartin recipe, which has just five ingredients, including cinnamon, which always elicits all the good autumnal feelings. The perfect thing to tuck into while cosying up with a good film. Get the recipe.
