Every shade of pink and packed with flavours in a single bite - bitter radicchio, sour grapefruit and smoky sweet trout. A great recipe for pre-dinner nibbles or deconstruct for a hearty spring salad.

It is, as I write, snowing. And that’s just typical isn’t it? The moment COVID restrictions allowed us to meet up to 6 people outside the temperature plummets. Still, if you too are sitting around a fire pit in ski kit, I have COVID-friendly snack suggestions. They can also be eaten with wooly gloves on. Which is an unforeseen benefit…

I don’t know about you, but my freezer can be a bit, how shall I put it, vague. A sort of a magical mystery tour through random leftovers, batch cooking frenzies, and veg patch gluts that I froze for ‘safe keeping’ having been unable to use the abundant harvest when it first arrived…

I always get a bit silly about forced rhubarb. I think it’s because the season falls when the weather is at its bleakest and the veg patch its muddiest and least productive. In this context, the bubblegum glow of forced rhubarb stems feel like neon lights shining through the gloom, a brief respite from murk…

That we are currently in Tier 2 of COVID restrictions and therefore only allowed to meet (six) friends outside was all the excuse I needed to whip up my mulled apple and rum punch. Because if you’re going to stand outside socialising in December, then you darn well better have a warm drink in your hand. And somehow a cuppa doesn’t cut it, does it?

A pickled quince is an enigmatic thing. On the one hand soft, sweet and blushing; on the other sharp, assertive, demanding. It has a delicate floral perfume yet brings a stern, acidic kick up the arse to any plate. You can never really pin it down. I make several batches of Nigel Slater’s pickled quince every Christmas to use in salads, with roasts or with cold meats and cheese during that picky leftover eating time between Christmas and New Year.

Kale doesn’t so much ‘glut’ as ‘persist’. In a good way. I rarely look out on the kale bed and fret about their being too much to use before it goes over. Because kale doesn’t really go over. It just sits there, through wind, frost, snow and gales, waiting until you are eat it. It’s a very obliging crop, really. Its reward is make an appearance in almost every meal over the winter…

It’s soup weather. And I’m quite fussy about soups. There is no room, in my mind, for a bland bowl of sameness just warmed and slopped into a dish. A good soup must have layers: a splash of sour, a crunch of salt, a swirl of cold against the hot foundation, so that every mouthful is alive with interest…

A glass of rosé, dewy with condensation. The low sun keeping the evening chill at bay. Perfume from the jasmine wafting over the terrace. Ah, June. On this sort of an evening it seems a shame to come inside to eat. Far nicer, don’t you think, to continue nursing that glass of rosé and nibble at a few bits and bobs whilst watching the sun set over the veg patch? And if those nibbles can be a celebration of that oh so picturesque kitchen garden, then so much the better.

The hero harvest this week is asparagus. But don’t imagine that’s because I like it. I mean, I love to eat it, sure. But asparagus is, in my view, petulant. I wouldn’t grow it if you paid me. In fact, I was paid to look after a bed of it once when I was working in an organic kitchen garden and it was enough to put me off for life.