When you’re trying to eat the seasons, March can be a funny month. Some years, it’s very much still winter in March. Others, it’s more or less summer! As a result, March’s seasonal food is a combination of wintry ingredients and summery flavours. We’ve found some of the tastiest looking recipes that make the best of all that’s in season in March.
Spring onion fritters
Image courtesy of realfood.tesco.com
A typically summery ingredient, spring onions can actually be grown all year round and are coming into the height of their season in March. These fritters, packed full of the lovely little green onions, make a delicious starter, side or snack. Get the full recipe from Tesco, and serve them with the garlic and paprika mayo they suggest – delicious!
What you’ll need
- 200g (7oz) flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 200ml whole milk
- 8 spring onions, finely sliced
- 2 tbsp parsley, chopped
- 15g (1/2oz) butter
How to make them
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl.
With your hand, create a well in the centre of the flour mixture and crack the eggs into the well. Whisk the flour in from the edges.
As you whisk, gradually add the milk until the mixture is fully combined and you have a smooth batter.
Mix the lemon zest, spring onions and parsley into the batter.
Heat a large frying pan with the butter. Once melted, ladle a tablespoon of batter into the pan and fry for a couple of minutes on each side until golden brown. At a tablespoon per fritter, you’ll probably be able to cook 3 or 4 at a time in your pan.
Lemon sole with chipotle and ancho chilli recado
Image courtesy of jamieoliver.com
We love Jamie Oliver‘s recipes here at Good Vibes – almost as much as we love eating fresh, seasonal fish! Mexican flavours bridge the seasons brilliantly, too. The chilli is a great winter warmer, while the avocado and tomato salad is refreshingly summery.
What you’ll need
- 4 lemon sole fillets
- 2 1/2 limes
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 dried chipotle chillies
- 2 dried ancho chillies
- 1½ tablespoon dried oregano
- 14 ripe cherry tomatoes
- 1 cucumber
- 3 spring onions (look they make an appearance here, too!)
- 1 ripe avocado
- Extra virgin olive oil
How to make it
To get started, pre-heat your oven to 180ºC/gas 4.
For the recado, roast the garlic – unpeeled – in a small roasting tin for 15-20 minutes until the cloves are soft. Transfer them to a plate to cool, then remove the skins. While the garlic is roasting, soak the chipotle and ancho chillies in a small bowl of boiling water. They need to be just about covered and left for 15 minutes. Drain them in a colander, keeping the chilli-water liquid.
Blend the chillies, garlic, oregano and a good pinch of sea salt in a food processor and blitz into a paste. Add the juice of half a lime and 4 tablespoons of chilli-water, and blitz again until combined.
Transfer your paste into a plastic mixing bowl, and place the fish in it. Cover with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
While the fish is chilling, make the salad! Halve the tomatoes, slice up the cucumber and spring onions, and de-stone, peel and chop the avocado. Combine in a bowl with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of a whole lime. Season the salad with salt and pepper to taste.
On a hot grill, cook the fish for three minutes on each side. You may need to baste with a bit of extra marinade as the fish cooks.
Serve with the salad and lime wedges from your last lime. We think spring onion fritters would go well with this dish, too!
Rhubarb and custard cake
Image courtesy of BBC Good Food
When you eat the seasons, you’ll find that some ingredients are in season for more than a month. Rhubarb is in season from February, through March, and sometimes into April. What better way to put it to use than in a classic combo? We are dying to get our hands on this cake by BBC Good Food…
What you’ll need
- 400g rhubarb
- 50g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
- 250g unsalted butter or margerine, plus extra for greasing
- 150g pot of ready-made custard (not the fresh chilled kind – we recommend Ambrosia or Bird’s)
- 250g self raising flour
- 4 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 250g golden caster sugar
How to make it
Pre-heat your oven to 200ºC.
Chop the ends off your rhubarb, and cut the stems into small, bitesize pieces. Toss in the caster sugar, then spread on a shallow baking tray, cover with foil and roast in the oven. After 15 minutes, remove the foil, give the tray a little shake, and roast for a further 5 minutes until the rhubarb is soft and the juices are nice and syrupy. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
In the meantime, beat all bar three tablespoons of the custard together with the eggs, flour, vanilla, butter and golden caster sugar until creamy and smooth.
Grease and line a 23cm cake tin, and place a layer of roasted rhubarb – as though you were making an upside down cake. You won’t use it all right now – but that’s fine!
Spoon 1/3 of the cake mixture into the tin and spread over the base layer of rhubarb. Add another layer of rhubarb on top of the cake mixture. Add the remaining cake mixture and rhubarb, spreading the mixture out as best you can. Finally, splodge in the three tablespoons of custard you set aside earlier.
Bake for 40 minutes until risen and golden, then cover in foil and bake for a further 15 minutes, or until a skewer through the middle comes out clean.
Cool your masterpiece in the tin, then dust with caster sugar before serving.
Leek, spring onion and chorizo tart
Image courtesy of deliciousmagazine.co.uk
This stunning tart from Delicious Magazine is a double whammy of seasonal ingredients, featuring leeks and spring onions. One of the best bits about it is how little prep it needs – perfect for a tasty but speedy weeknight supper! Plus, if (and that’s a big if) you have leftovers, this tart makes a cracking lunch served cold with a salad the next day.
What you’ll need
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 4 chorizo style chipolatas, or similar
- 110g baby leeks, sliced lengthways
- Small bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
- 50g butter, melted
- 3 large filo pastry sheets, halved to make 6 rectangles
- 2 medium free-range eggs
- 200ml double cream
- Small bunch of fresh basil, leaves shredded
How to make it
Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC, and grease an 18cm loose bottomed cake tin with a little butter.
In a pan, heat the oil. Slice the sausages diagonally into pieces roughly 2cm thick and fry for 5 minutes until cooked through and crispy on the outside. Keep them moving as you fry to make sure they cook evenly!
Remove the sausages from the pan with a slotted spoon and set them aside in a bowl. Pour half the fat from the pan away, then add the leeks and spring onions and fry for 8-10 minutes until soft. Add to the bowl of sausages and leave to coo.
Brush a sheet of filo pastry with a little melted butter, and carefully fit it into your cake tin and up the sides. Place another sheet on top, brush that with a little butter, and repeat until you have 6 layers of pastry.
Mix the eggs, cream and basil in a jug with a little salt and pepper.
Scatter the sausage, leek and spring onion mixture over the base of your filo tart, then pour over the eggs and cream.
Bake the tart for 25-30 minutes until cooked through and golden.
Happy cooking!
