Johnny Stanford, head chef at Tern in Worthing, demystifies the terminology used in professional kitchens and explains the practical application of seasonal cooking.
The term seasonality appears frequently in discussions about food.
It appears on dining establishment menus, in retail food settings and during conversations about produce, yet its precise meaning often remains unclear.
The answer varies depending on the timing of the inquiry.
Seasonal patterns have become less consistent than historically observed and resist neat month-by-month classification.
Environmental conditions, cultivation circumstances and geographic location all contribute to the equation.
Authentic seasonal eating involves remaining attentive to current local circumstances, and late August represents a particularly rewarding period for this approach.
This timeframe marks a transitional phase.
Summer crops remain widely available, occasionally in quantities exceeding market demand, whilst early autumn harvest indicators start to emerge.
One growing season winds down as another commences.
Within professional culinary environments, surplus produce presents opportunities.
When ingredients arrive in volume, chefs employ preservation techniques including pickling, fermentation and infusion.
This serves dual purposes: providing interesting components for later utilisation whilst representing sound economic sense.
Utilising ingredients whilst they are plentiful, at peak quality and affordable constitutes sound practice applicable equally in domestic settings.
Monitoring sudden price reductions at specialist grocers or larger retailers proves worthwhile.
Slightly overripe berries need not meet visual perfection standards if destined for gentle cooking with minimal sugar.
The resulting mixture serves multiple purposes, functioning as a breakfast compote, rapid preserve or foundation for a late-summer dessert.
This transitional moment offers particular appeal.
Using abundant summer berries as a foundation alongside early local offerings such as blackberries or first-season damsons achieves a literal meeting of two growing periods within a single serving.
Complete self-sufficiency remains unnecessary.
Professional and domestic cooking operate under different constraints.
Pre-prepared elements like meringues may be purchased, ideally from neighbourhood bakeries, with effort concentrated on stages where intervention yields meaningful results.
Fundamentally, seasonal eating eschews rigid adherence to prescriptive rules.
Instead, it involves observing which ingredients flood the market, which make initial appearances and which recede, then capitalising fully during their availability.