Eating seasonal Ingredients is paramount when it comes to good cooking. It’s going to give you a better end product whilst saving a few of your hard-earned dollars.
We have decided to make this a regular topic, planning to write about seasonal ingredients more, with a view to making the information easier to access for anyone that’s interested.
We have chosen 9 everyday Seasonal ingredients and have supplied a quick tip for each based on what we like to do with these ingredients at home.
The idea is quick, easy to digest information to encourage the use and knowledge of seasonal ingredients for Australian Spring.
Here are our 9 Seasonal Ingredients for Australia’s Spring
- Asparagus
- Pineapple
- Strawberries
- Mandarins
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Kale
- Blood Oranges
- Broad beans
Asparagus
Asparagus, often crops up as one of our favourite veggies. If we had to pick one way to cook it, we would say grilled wrapped in Procuttio with a squeeze of lemon. It’s a winner!
Pineapple
Pineapple is amazing just as is, but for our top tips we are going to say throw it on the grill and char it up! Stick it on a burger or with some ginger ice cream it works well with sweet or savoury.
Strawberries
This goes back to our childhood, simply serve as is with Ice Cream. The key here is choosing ripe strawberries. Plump, deep red in colour and not over firm.
Mandarins
We love to peel and slice mandarins up into salads. Particularly as spring starts to show, and things are warming up. Thinly sliced fennel, mandarin, goats cheese and rocket… that’s a side salad you’ll see at our place this Spring.
Broccoli
Top Tip for broccoli, Use the tips in a pasta, then save the stalks. We use these stalks to bulk out a soup. Last week we opted for Broccoli stalk, potato and spinach veloute, then we served it with some blue cheese grilled sourdough. Yum.
Cauliflower
Rub the Cauliflower with a red bean miso paste and some sesame oil, roast it whole or in halves and allow it to caramelize. Serve it with some steamed rice, veggies and ponzu dressing.
Kale
We love our Seasonal Spring kale sliced fine and seasoned with lemon juice and salt. We allow the lemon and salt to sit on the kale for about 20 mins before we serve, this softens and seasons it instead of it being too raw and hard work on the jaw. Not to mention its delicious.
Blood Oranges
Use them to garnish and flavour a Negroni, we promise you and your friends will thank us later.
Broad beans
We would usually lean towards a salad for our Broad beans, or sometimes a risotto. We had some Lamb left over from a Roast recently and rustled up a Lamb Shoulder, Broad Bean, Pea and Mint Risotto. A little bit of crumbled feta and garden rocket to garnish and it rocked our world!
If you have any top tips for seasonal ingredients you can find in Australia this spring, let us know in the comments below.