Foods in season in April – Food For Kids Podcast episode 89

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Introduction and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. It's the start of April and spring is definitely in the air with all the promise of bounties to come this year. So here are your April foods to add to your shopping list and get kids to explore.

I give you this list of seasonal foods each month because they'll normally be bit cheaper, a bit better for the planet, but also because they often taste better in season, so it's a good time to help kids to explore fruit and vegetables when they taste their best.

April is full of the joys of spring, with still some quite chilly days and a fair few showers, but the soil is definitely warming up now and so almost every crop that can grow in the UK can be sown by the end of this month, even if some of them have to stay indoors until after the last frosts in May. There are the starts of some new season foods, most of them quick growing crops, but because the winter storage crops are fading away now, we have a slightly smaller list this month and traditionally April and May were known as the hungry gap, meaning the gap between the last season's stored goodies and enough calories being available from the new crops. So is where our forebears would have relied on some fermented or canned produce and we can rely on tins and frozen things too.

But let's start with what's in the shops that was grown in the UK right now.

Ok so for our April foods we'll have a short list of the new season things, and then a few of the leftover stored goodies and finally some imported seasonal treats. In February and March we talked about new season rhubarb and purple sprouting broccoli and both of these are still going strong in April.

The spring greens we talked about last month are also more abundant this month and really cheap and nutritious, but now they are joined by some other greens, the very quick and early varieties of things like spinach and lettuce that have been grown under glass. It's a welcome sight to see some green shoots on the plate and they'll only get more available as we slide into May.

Radishes also grow in just a few weeks, so the ones that were sown in early March will be around by the end of April to give you a bright coloured peppery bite. Children can enjoy seeing inside a radish when you slice it, that bright skin and the white insides, and if you grow them they're a good crop for children to pull up because they can't really do them any harm. They are a peppery and unusual taste for children, so if your child has never tried one before then it's probably easiest to try it as a bit of fun where they're expected to find them a bit odd and spicy and have some water nearby. So they don't feel pressure to like them the first time. They can have a bit of a giggle about how peppery they are. Don't forget that radishes roast really well too and it tones down their bite and brings in some sweet notes.

A couple of other quick crops that you might find locally or have in your own garden, especially towards the end of the month, are pea shoots, which are just the tops off a climbing pea plant. They're delicious and lovely on top of a salad or in a sandwich and they have a lovely faintly pea flavoured crunch. And spring onions too, which grow very quickly and are slim pencil shapes this time of year.

One food which starts to show itself during the end of this month and into May is asparagus. The main season is through May into late June, but if the soil and air temperature is warm in April we will start to see some of them shooting up in April. I'll cover asparagus in more detail in the May episode, but look out for a few fresh spears right towards the end of the month.

And another food which starts in April but really takes centre stage in May is Jersey Royal new potatoes. Most new potatoes aren't available until at least the end of May and usually into June, but Jersey Royals have been set up to pip them to the post every year by about a month. Farmers have been growing new potatoes on the island of Jersey for nearly 150 years and there are about 20 farms there that focus on them and some of them only grow Jersey Royal potatoes.

Jersey has the exact perfect conditions for growing early potatoes, which is why it makes up about 70 % of the crops they export. Jersey's got a perfect microclimate, soil make-up and combination of slightly warmer temperatures than the mainland and mineral deposits from the sea and from seaweed that they use as fertiliser. In addition, lots of the potatoes are grown on huge slopes on the hillsides there because this makes for perfect levels of drainage. But because these slopes can't handle tractors, the spuds on those slopes are mostly harvested by hand and in peak season pickers will work up to 12 hours a day.

Because of this gentle hand harvesting they can be taken up when they're very small and very thin skinned and you'll find that the skins of Jersey Royals will come off with just a scrub or a scrape and don't need peeling. This makes them quite fun to get children to help with. They can try a scrubbing brush, a smooth butter knife to scrape or the back of a teaspoon to get the paper skin off. Of course, they can also be eaten in their skins and children can try taste testing with or without to see which they prefer. Their waxy, intensely potatoey flavour can be a big hit with just some butter and it can be a way for children who normally only like potatoes as mash or fries to get to know a boiled, steamed or roasted waxy potato.

Look out for them in the shops during April. They have a protected designation which means that only the new potatoes from Jersey are allowed to be called Jersey Royals in the shops.

OK, so that's our new season treats. For the end of the stored winter foods, we've pretty much run out of the root crops now, but the brassicas, so cabbages, kales and spear-forming broccoli types like purple sprouting are still available everywhere And there are some proper new season spring cabbages around now too. Leeks are coming towards the end of their season now and will start to flower in late April and May but you can still get them everywhere during this month. And of course cultivated mushrooms and stored onions are available everywhere too.

So that's a list of UK grown foods, some new small but tasty treats to show us the season to come.

And now for a few foods that are imported but are at their seasonal best right now.

For imported greens we can still get plenty of collard greens, they are available all year but they prefer the cool season so January to April is their best season so we can still get fresh ones now. And there are some new season pak choi available too. You can grow it here in late winter under glass but the new season pak choi is just starting to ramp up now and will be in peak season next month.

A lot of the citrus fruits come to their end in late March and the first week or so of April, so grab the last few while you can. Grapefruit tend to stay around little longer for most of this month.

The mango crops that started tentatively last month are getting going now so you can get new season mangoes and as always you can get bananas, plantains and pineapple pretty much all year round.

So that's the April roundup of seasonal food. It's a little thin on the ground with the older season crops dwindling and the new things only just starting, but the new things make up for it with their intense joyful spring flavours, so get some of them on your list. I hope this episode will give you some ideas of what to pick out in your next shopping trip and see if your child can pick out a couple in the shops and that will help build their familiarity.

If you want a written list to work from, as always, you'll find a link to the list on our website in the show notes, or you can get one of our fun child-friendly printables to stick on the fridge.

In one of next week's episodes, I'll share five family-friendly ideas for cooking with some of these April foods as we look forward to spring, but I'll be back with another non-seasonal related episode in between. So I hope you'll join me then. And in the meantime, happy eating!

00:00 Introduction

01:35 UK grown February seasonal foods

06:13 Imported February seasonal foods

07:04 Summary and outro