Berries are back! Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for September
Strawberries are down to $3 a punnet, cauliflower is $2,50 a head and Hass avocados ‘should be on everyone’s menu’Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email“Springtime is tricky with fruit, because you’re getting rid of your winter citrus and the exotic summer stuff hasn’t started yet,” says owner and buyer Josh Flamminio at Sydney’s Galluzzo Fruiterers,But there are hints of what’s to come,“Mangoes have already started from the Northern Territory,We’re selling two for $10 at the moment,” Flamminio says.
“They’re a good size – you’re not getting itsy-bitsy ones,”Once Queensland’s mango season begins, prices will come down further,Carmel Dawson, co-owner of Geelong Fresh Foods, says strawberry prices are already dropping,“We are selling large 500g punnets for only $3,” she says,“The quality is good and a real treat for our customers.
”Strawberry supply is coming from Queensland and Western Australia, and with the overlap in growing areas it’s driving down the price.There are plenty of ways to make use of ample supply.If you really want to impress, try Helen Goh’s strawberry jelly panna cotta.“Bread-and-butter” Imperial mandarins have finished, but late-season variety Afourers still have another four or five in season.They’re selling for about $4.
5o a kilo in supermarkets.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningLate-picking apples are around, but they’re not at their best as many crops are likely to have been kept in coolers since autumn.At $1.50 apiece, Hass avocados should be on everyone’s menu in spring, Flamminio says, with supply coming from South Australia and Queensland.Blueberries have been up and down – they’re currently about $5 a punnet – but they should be in abundance in two or three weeks.
The allure of summer stone fruit is still a while away, with cherries and lychees not expected until November,Broccoli, spinach and cauliflower are all in season, with brussels sprouts still in good supply at about $9 a kilo,“All leafy greens start to flourish [in spring],” Dawson says,Cauliflower is as little as $2,50 a head.
Whole roast a head of cauli to make Tony Tan’s char siu cauliflower with a Cantonese twist,Broccoli is about $4,50 a kilo and just a month ago it was double the price per kilo – so now is the time to make Italian-style whole broccoli pasta,Its close relative broccolini is also as little as $2 a bunch,Sign up to Saved for LaterCatch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tipsafter newsletter promotionFlamminio says the best of the greens are English spinach, celery and cavolo nero (also known as Tuscan cabbage).
Particularly plentiful in market, cavolo nero can be torn into Alice Zaslavsky’s blond minestrone for a warm lunch on cooler days, alongside potatoes and “beautiful” fennel, at $3,50 to $4 a bulb in supermarkets, says Flamminio,Spring favourite asparagus is on its way,It is still about $4,50 to $5 a bunch, though set to come down in a few weeks.
Green beans – which have been expensive for a while – are now in a much better place for spring salads, at only about $6 a kilo.Try a French-inspired quick and easy red rice and green bean salad, with pomegranate molasses and sumac dressing.“They’re very plentiful in the market at the moment,” Flamminio says.There has been a lot of rain in Queensland, so cherry truss tomatoes are $12-13 a kilo, so they’re best avoided at the moment, Flamminio says.But gourmet tomatoes and roma tomatoes are steady at about $5 a kilo and not likely to rise in price soon.
Stuff them with rice, as in Rachel Roddy’s recipe for pomodoro-al-riso.Buy: Afourer mandarins Beetroot Broccoli Brussels sprouts Blood oranges Cauliflower Cavolo nero Grapefruit Green beans Hass avocados Lettuce Mangoes Red capsicum Spinach StrawberriesWatch: ApplesAsparagus BlueberriesAvoid:Grapes – finishedLimes Passionfruit
No culinary war, no sweary saucier: why The Cook and the Chef is still the best food TV
When did we decide making food should be stressful? I believe it was around 2009, when MasterChef Australia took off, with its explosions and tears and plate-throwing; of course we ruthlessly exported it, like the Hemsworths.Along the way, cooking went from being an act of service to an extreme sport. As a result, you can now watch people shout and cry as they decorate a mille-feuille on most of the streamers. Cooking is now a form of combat – there are Cake Wars, Cupcake Wars and Culinary Class Wars – and frequently, pure spectacle. You can make a cake that looks like a lifesize Superman (ahem, Super Mega Cakes) – but, as I said out loud while watching two contestants have a fight about time management, when is someone going to fucking eat something?Most new cooking shows are not really about food at all, but drama
Bath’s Holburne museum to unveil ‘art chamber’ of Renaissance masterpieces
Beneath the Georgian city of Bath, a gleaming treasury of Renaissance masterpieces created for kings, queens, church leaders and scientists is about to be unveiled.Based on the idea of the Renaissance kunstkammer – an art chamber – the basement room at the Holburne Museum is crammed with scores of exquisite pieces of silverware, paintings, bronzes and ceramics.They include an astonishing model of a silver ship, a rare mechanical celestial globe and a silver-gilt vessel likely to have belonged to Henry VIII.“It’s wonderful having pieces here that you’d usually see in places like the Met in New York or the British Museum,” said Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne.The treasures were collected over many decades by the Schroder family, who made their fortune as merchants and bankers, and have been loaned to the Holburne for at least 20 years
Non-profit collective plans festival to help grassroots live music circuit
A group of festival organisers and grassroots venues have launched a “pioneering, gamechanging music collective” to counter what they say is the slow collapse of the UK’s alternative live circuit.Blaming soaring costs and corporate dominance for pushing dozens of smaller events to close, the not-for-profit festival will bring together independent festivals, venues and collectives to share resources, cut costs and pool audiences.Led by Si Chai, the founder of Chai Wallahs, the Where It All Began festival – scheduled for next spring – has been backed by the Music Venue Trust. Freddie Fellowes, the founder of the Secret Garden Party festival, has offered to host the event on his family’s farm in Cambridgeshire.“The current independent festival model has become unsustainable, pressured and too financially stressful for most organisers since Covid, which means a wealth of incredible grassroots artists are being denied a fair opportunity to perform and carve out their own careers,” said Chai
Holding opera and Anna Netrebko to account for Putin’s war crimes | Letters
Martin Kettle accurately highlights the moral dilemma faced by the Royal Opera House in hiring the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko for the upcoming performances of Tosca (As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one, 28 August). He goes on to place the ball in Netrebko’s court by suggesting she should withdraw from the performances or “say something unambiguous for the British audience in opposition to Putin’s continuing war”. He later acknowledges that Netrebko stated her opposition to the war at its outset and that she was attacked for her stance by the Russian regime.Must this happen again? As Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova pointed out, when speaking in a 2022 Guardian interview of how she was “pretty much ready to die” when she went on hunger strike: “If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end
The Divine Comedy on Something for the Weekend: ‘We hired a statuesque model for the video. I had to stand on a box’
Having made two albums with a chamber vibe, I was thinking, “Where do I go from here?” I started hearing your Suedes and Saint Etiennes, and Blur were referencing stuff from the 60s and 70s too. I could see the way the wind was blowing. That sounds quite knowing, but I already loved John Barry, the Kinks, Adam Faith and, of course, Scott Walker.I’d come up with a very eurocentric chord sequence, not the type you get in rock’n’roll, almost slightly Pet Shop Boys. Watching the 1995 adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm, I noticed that the grandmother’s repeated line, “There’s something in the woodshed,” scanned with the tune I was writing
Sally Phillips: ‘I saw Hugh Grant and I screamed. I was surprised he was human-size’
What do people approach you about most: Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones, Alan Partridge or shoving cake into Alex Horne’s armpits?I profile them as they come up. If it’s a man about my age, it would normally be Alan Partridge. If it’s a man in his 30s, it might be Taskmaster or Veep. If it’s a woman, it’s harder to tell. Smack the Pony seems to be having a revival among women in their 20s but it could easily be Bridget Jones and Miranda
Martha’s rule now in operation at every acute hospital in England
Latte-swilling ‘performative males’: why milky drinks are shorthand for liberal
Ministers urged to digitise adoption records to help reunite families
Scrap two-child benefit cap to help lift 4m people out of poverty, government urged
People over 60: how have you been affected by the housing crisis?
Long Covid has more than 200 potential symptoms. Selective gullibility is one of mine