Opinion

Anita Robinson: Forget the courgette shortage, I'm sticking to home produced veg

There's apparently a courgette crisis and of course people have reacted appropriately
There's apparently a courgette crisis and of course people have reacted appropriately There's apparently a courgette crisis and of course people have reacted appropriately

Another week – another crisis. And this time it’s really serious. Iceberg lettuce, courgettes, aubergines and peppers are not to be had – not even for ready money. The price of rocket is rocketing and, we’re told, shortages of tomatoes, cucumber, spinach and broccoli are imminent.

Rumour has it imported citrus fruit will shortly be in short supply. The upwardly mobile are in despair, their Nutri-bullet juicers silent upon granite worktops; the aspirational are anxious about their spiralizers gathering dust in the futility room. How are we to manage in this culinary crisis? Are you at your wits’ end?

No… me neither. Surely we haven’t strayed so far from our rearing? I don’t know about you, but I’m bravely managing to produce a varied selection of nourishing meals without any of the aforementioned produce.

The ‘healthy eating’ craze has weaned us away from the simple foods we were brought up on. Foreign travel and eating out have titillated our tastebuds with the exotic flavours of faraway places.

International imports and ethnic restaurants have given us easy access to the cuisine of other cultures and encouraged us to experiment with the unusual. Thanks to the huge influx of unfamiliar commodities and refrigeration, we live in a seasonless year of perpetual availability. Remember how it used to be? Spring lamb at Easter, the first salmon of the season proudly displayed on the fishmonger’s slab, the brief strawberry glut in June; the apple-man from Armagh who came round the doors in autumn with bucketsful of big green cookers and sweet streaky-skinned eaters; new Comber potatoes with their distinct flavour.

The only imports I recall were Canary bananas, Dutch lettuce and tomatoes, papery-skinned Cyprus potatoes and the tissue-wrapped orange from Spain in the toe of my Christmas stocking. Our locally-grown sources of vitamins and roughage were carrots, parsnips, turnips, cabbages, leeks and celery and in season, peas in their pods, broad beans in their blankets and, my unfavourite, cauliflower in white sauce – all plainly cooked. Our condiments were salt, pepper, butter, mustard, HP sauce, salad cream and malt vinegar for chips. Desserts were bread-pudding, baked rice, custard with prunes or rhubarb and trifle on Sundays.

I open my kitchen cupboards today upon an array of herbs, spices, oils, sauces and four kinds of salt. The most exotic thing my mother ever put in a casserole was an Oxo cube. Think how adventurous we’ve become in one generation. What child nowadays isn’t familiar with pasta, pizza, curries, rice and noodle-based dishes – foods my generation never encountered in our youth when melon was a thing you got for starters in a fancy hotel?

My teens brought the infamous ‘Vesta’ packet curry, my twenties, the sweet-and-sour proliferation of Chinese takeaways and the revelatory burger revolution; my thirties, the start of an endless procession of television chefs, still extant. Fear that the microwave oven and the stealthy encroachment of ready-meals might turn us into a nation of ‘convenience eaters’ proved, for the most part, unfounded – though being able to buy dinner for two in a box is a boon for busy working couples. Supermarkets have found it profitable to service this newly-knowledgeable clientele by stocking fresh chillies, lemongrass and mangoes now that Sunday dinner is as likely to be Thai green curry as a joint of beef and roasties.

Today, the humble potato finds itself supplanted by pasta, rice and couscous. Oddly, the people who couldn’t stomach cabbage are happy to consume it as ‘kale’. I won’t lament the scarcity of the abomination that is aubergines, which have the look, texture and taste of a damp insole, nor the green slime of courgettes.

Anyway – it’s time we came briskly to our senses. Be realistic. This is February – white frost on the grass, black ice on the roads and the air keen as a knife. Who, in their right mind, wants to eat salad in this weather? And who, in their right mind, would buy iceberg lettuce anytime? It’s just cold water in a green skin – utterly tasteless. Meanwhile – stuff the peppers! Away and make a big pot of leek and potato soup….