Foods in season in October – Food For Kids Podcast episode 37

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. It's the start of October already and that means it's time for a regular look at what's in season this month.

We're properly into autumn now, so this is the time of year where we get to appreciate the very last of those late summer fruits and move gradually into those earthy roots, leafy greens and squashes of autumn and winter. If you're trying to get children interested in fruit and veg, October is a great month because there are so many colours and textures and flavours to explore.

So let's start with the foods that are still coming out of UK farms and gardens now.

As I said in the intro, we're at the end of the summer plants so it really is a good time to make the most of them while you can still get them locally and fresh. I'm talking about things like hot climate foods like aubergines, peppers, tomatoes and sweet corn.

Obviously you can get them all year round but they're usually grown in glass houses and imported. A lot of them come in from the Netherlands where they have great big greenhouses and we still get some from the Mediterranean where they have a couple more weeks of warm weather after us. But for the least food miles and the freshest taste make the most of them now.

Some of our own native fruits are also coming to an end because of the cold air killing off the leaves. Things like raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, plums and damsons will be finishing up in October. And a couple of the allotment favourites are also finishing, like peas and green beans. So make the most of those before they start to be mostly imported or switch over to frozen ones.

So that's the stuff that's finishing up, but then there's also the fruits that we're bang in the middle of, which is apples and pears, as well as quite a lot of native nuts like chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts.

Apples and pears really are still in full flow. Many varieties of pears are actually softer and sweeter than apples which can make them easier for younger children to manage Ripe pears obviously bruise easily so buy them a little firm and let them ripen at home. If your child often struggles with textures you might find that peeling a pear and slicing it thinly is more successful because it's often the skin that can put them off. And then let's move into the foods that are coming into their own now as the weather cools down. Pumpkins and butternut squash are of course everywhere now because of Halloween and it's a great time to get children to explore them. If you're going to be carving a pumpkin let your child get their hands all gooey scooping out the flesh and seeds.

I have a blog post on my website all about what to do with the seeds and the instructions are all aimed at children so that's a lot of fun. Save some of the flesh for cooking so children can see the connection between the fun carving activity and the original food it came from.

Pumpkins can be an acquired taste just as they are but they do have a lot of natural sweetness especially when they're roasted. Pumpkin flesh can be whizzed into soups, added to muffins and other bakes, you can even make ice cream from it. I will make sure to include a pumpkin recipe in the recipe suggestions next week so you have something to do with your carved pumpkin.

Lots of pumpkin recipes also work for butternut squash although it is generally a little sweeter and denser and it works well in lot of curries and pasta sauces to add extra veg without any fuss.

Celery is slap bang in the middle of its season now so it's pretty plentiful. Of course we know it works well raw with dips. I always used to cut mine in half lengthways for my kids before cutting it into sticks so it felt a bit more like a baton and it was easier to chew than having the full width stalks. But celery is also a great addition to the beginning of lots of soups and stews, it more or less disappears into the sauce so that's another good way to get it into foods without any fuss.

Beetroot is another star this month. We've previously talked about adding it to mashed potato and risotto to make bright pink fun foods, but another way is to grate a little bit of it raw into coleslaw. It adds great colour, but the other veggies and the mayo hold up well against the flavour.

Celeriac is one of the weirdest looking vegetables and for that reason it's quite a good one to explore with children if you just wanted them to mess about with their food and you don't necessarily expect them to eat it straight away. They can help peel off all the weird knobbly bits and young children sometimes think it looks a bit like a cartoon character with all the weird wiggly hairy bits so it's quite fun to talk about.

For family-friendly eating, try adding some to potato dishes such as gratin, mashed potato or rosti. I usually found I could get away with about a quarter to a third replaced with celeriac before it kind of overpowered the potatoiness of the dish. It does add a really nice earthy celery-ish kind of depth.

Brassica plants where we eat the flowers like cauliflower and broccoli are at their best now. Some children really struggle with them if they are just presented steamed or boiled on their own. But you could try roasting florets with a drizzle of oil until they go crispy at the edges. Air frying works great too. For children who do like broccoli it can be great cooked lightly and then used to dip into things, sauces or even things like hummus. Some children even like a couple of lightly steamed, still crunchy florets in their lunchbox with some ranch to dip into.

Other brassicas like cabbage, kale and chard are all in season now too, but Brussels sprouts won't be at their best until after we've had some frost. As we've mentioned before, chard can be fun for children because of the big brightly coloured stems. It's a good veg to let them chop up with scissors. But savoy cabbages and kale are also good for stripping the leafy parts off the stalks, either with their hands or with scissors to practice. All brassicas can be strong in flavour, so for kids shredding them small can make a big difference. You can steam them, you can add them stir-fried into noodles, or savoy cabbage and kale goes really well with bacon or cheese in pasta.

Two slightly unusual ones around now are kohlrabi and turnips. Kohlrabi basically looks like a small kale plant but where the stem is all swollen up into a tennis sized ball. So it looks like a pale beetroot that's grown above the ground. We eat the ball part of it although actually the leaves are edible too.

It's crunchy like a mild radish slash cabbage kind of mix of flavours but you can cook it or eat it raw in matchsticks or in coleslaw.

Turnips have obviously been eaten in the UK for many centuries but they kind of fell out of favour a bit along with parsnips when potatoes took over. They are still widely eaten in parts of the UK, particularly in Scotland. They are lovely roasted in a tray baked with carrots and potatoes. The sweetness really comes out in the oven.

If you want an unusual fruit you could try a quince. They look like a pear but with a golden colour and sometimes a bit of a fuzzy coating. They’re quite large, they're too hard to eat raw but they turn incredibly fragrant and go a sort of a pinky gold when cooked. If you find them in a shop or market near you, try poaching them with apples for a crumble filling. They take a bit longer to cook than apples so either cut them smaller or start them off earlier. They bring out the flavour of the apples if you put them in a crumble or a pie. And they make amazing jelly to go with meats and cheeses so look out for a jar of that in the shops. It's an unusual food, but if you do manage to get hold of some and cook them, make sure your child smells the kitchen while they're cooking. The aroma is incredible.

Okay, so that's the UK ones, and now for some imported seasonal treats. Pomegranates are widely available now and really good fun for children to explore. Those little jewel-like seeds are great scattered over their yoghurt or ice cream or stirred in things like couscous or on a salad. You can cut them in half and let children whack out the seeds with a spoon or gouge them out with their hands. It's really messy but really memorable.

And finally, don't forget the all year round favourites of plantains, bananas and pineapple. If your child's never tried plantains, see if you can get some at a local international greengrocers and see how lovely they are cooked. If you've got Caribbean friends or family, then you'll have good recipes to try out. But if not, then Google some Caribbean recipes and explore them together.

So that's the October round up, a month of spooky squashes, roots and brassicas with some fruity highlights as well. Why not take this list with you to the shop and let your child choose one fruit or vegetable on your next trip. If you'd like a full list of foods this month, I'll put a link in the show notes to the October food page on my website. I'll also put a link to that blog post about how to explore the seeds and flesh of a pumpkin while you're doing your carving.

In one of next week's episodes I'll share some easy family recipes using pumpkins and some of these other autumn goodies. But in the meantime, happy eating!

00:00 Introduction

00:46 October seasonal foods grown in the UK

07:03 Imported October seasonal foods

07:50 Summary and outro