What's in season in October

October usually starts with relatively mild (and this year sunny) weather, but often ends cold and positively autumnal. This change is reflected in the crops that are available. Early October sees the very last of the tender crops. By the end of the month there is an array of autumnal favourites available: leeks, swedes and cabbages to name but a few. It is a good month for fruit – with many varieties of apple and pear being harvested. October is also good for wild mushrooms, and a great time of year for game. It is the last month when one is likely to have a glut of some sort, and gives an final opportunity for preserving.

What's in season in September

When it comes to seasonal produce, September brings rich pickings. In the veg plot, late summer stalwarts such as tomatoes, courgettes and beans are still cropping, albeit a little more slowly than in the glut-ridden days of August. These are joined by the first of the autumn varieties, leeks, kale and other brassicas, and autumn fruits like apples and pears.  September is one of the best months for foraging, with an abundance of wild fruit and mushrooms there for the picking.

Damsons

What's in season in February

February is a funny old month. It is the month that in the UK can bring some of the harshest winter weather, and I write this having travelled through a fair bit of snow to get to work today. People are usually getting sick of winter, but spring still seems a way off. That said, the days are definitely getting longer, and towards the end of the month we sometimes get the odd nice day that suggests that spring is maybe not so far away. It is a similar story in terms of seasonal ingredients, at the start of the month we're still looking at a lot of winter staples: roots and brassicas, and we wave goodbye to most game birds for another season, but towards the end of the month we start to see a few new things that hint of the approaching change of seasons.

Roast Partridge with puy lentils

Roast partridge on puy lentils

Partridge is one of my favourite game birds. Many game aficionados get excited about the beginning of the grouse season, and I do too. But it is the unheralded arrival of partridges in early September that really gets me excited about game. Partridge has a pretty long season - from 1 September to 1 February in Great Britain. Like pheasant, partridge has relatively pale, pink-tinged flesh, with a more delicate, sweeter flavour than pheasant. It is a smallish bird, and conveniently a whole bird is just about the right size for a single portion. Like most game birds, it is fairly lean, and can easily become dry. The secret to roasting partridges so that they stay moist is to brown them off in a frying pan, and then pop them in a hot oven for just a few minutes. The same method also works well for grouse and wood pigeon.

I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's son...

Autumn brings with it an abundance of seasonal foodstuffs. One of my favourites is game. The game season starts with much hoohah on 12 August, the 'Glorious Twelfth', when the red grouse season opens. Restaurants fall over themselves to have grouse on their menus on the evening of the Twelfth, or at latest the 13th. (Given that grouse benefits from several days hanging, and that a huge premium is charged for these mid-August birds, I usually wait several weeks before indulging). The partridge and mallard season opens on 1 September, with pheasants and woodcock following on 1 October.