As roast and soup season starts, it is “a good time for brassicas”, says Graham Gee, senior buyer at the Happy Apple in Melbourne – “cauliflower and broccoli”. “You get a good supply of cabbage, kale, silverbeet and leeks too. All the robust veggies.”
While they might not be ultra cheap, he says “a whole cauliflower can go a long way. You can feed a lot of people with them.”
Rising costs of fuel and imported fertiliser have affected prices across the board, says Gee – echoed by Michael Hsu, operational manager at Sydney’s Panetta Mercato, and Salvatore Galati, owner of Galati & Sons in Fremantle.
All three grocers say price increases may not be noticeable in store yet, but “expect to see a few little increases” over time, Gee says.
Cauliflower is $4 to $5 a head this month at the Happy Apple. They’re between $5 and $5.50 in supermarkets and Galati & Sons sells them for just $3.50 each.
Roast a whole cauliflower with spices, lentils and chorizo, using Georgina Hayden’s recipe (pictured above), or rice florets into Tom Hunt’s low-carb cauliflower and almond “risotto”. For a cheesy, mustardy main, try Yotam Ottolenghi’s “molten lava” curried cauliflower cheese filo pie.
Graze on maize
Corn is “in abundance”, Hsu says. An ear of corn is $1 in supermarkets and at Panetta Mercato’s Marrickville store. Galati, in Western Australia, sells corn cobs for 69c each. Chetna Makan’s recipe for corn on the cob curry is fragrant with curry leaves and cumin, while her easy coriander mint chutney butter can be drizzled as a topping over barbecued cobs. Naked cobs can be used afterwards; save the empty cobs and use them in Ottolenghi’s corn creme brulee with coffee liqueur.
Return to roots
“Potatoes have come down dramatically because of the cold weather,” Hsu says. “The cooler climate is good for these core vegetables.” Panetta sells them for around $4 a kilo, the Happy Apple has potatoes for $3 to $4 a kilo, and washed loose white potatoes are less than 90c each in supermarkets, or $4.90 per kilo.
Sweet potato is also good value, Galati says. He’s selling them for $2.49 per kilo. In supermarkets they’re a little more expensive at $3.50 and $4.90 per kilo, or less than $2 a unit.
In Alice Zaslavsky’s recipe for sweet potato jackets, the baked veg becomes the bed for a bright and crunchy salad with shredded cabbage and carrot; while Meera Sodha’s jacket sweet potato with smoked tofu, slaw and crispy chilli mayo recipe goes large on umami.
Stick to the cheaper orange-fleshed potatoes, Hsu says, as the purple ones are more expensive “because of social media”, he says. Online fame has made them “a bit scarce”.
Carrots are also very good value at the moment, says Galati, who sells them for 99c per kilo. “They’re fairly consistently priced year-round,” Hsu says, but “good carrots are around $2.99 a kilo, or one-kilo bags are $2”.
Gee agrees: “Carrots only cost a couple of dollars a kilo but they fill up a plate. You get a lot of nutrition out of them.”
Crunchy carrots are 35c to 44c each in supermarkets, or $2.40 per kilo. Turn whole carrots into a ras el hanout-spiced stew with Tom Hunt’s recipe, or roast a bunch for José Pizarro’s carrot, saffron and chickpea stew with spinach.
Up the apples and pears
New season apples are the best-value fruit in April. “We’ve got some beautiful ones coming through,” says Gee. “Gala and kanzi, granny smith, the little baby missile apples.”
Hsu and Galati say the gala is the cheapest. At Galati & Sons, they are selling for $3.49 per kilo.
Fans of the zestier granny smith will find them for around $4 a kilo at Panetta Mercato in Sydney, and between $1.30 and $1.40 each in supermarkets.
Ottolenghi uses green-skinned apples in his potato, apple and gruyere pie. For something sweet, Meera Sodha uses two granny smiths in her apple pudding cake and Helen Goh bakes them with tahini, dried fruit and a touch of lemon for a wholesome pud.
“Pears are really good too,” Gee says. “Corella, the green packham, bosc.” The Happy Apples sells packham pears for $2 to $3 a kilo; william bartlett pears are $3.50 per kilo in supermarkets, or around 70c each.
Red alert!
Red kiwis, grown in New Zealand, have just become available in Australia, Gee says. “They’ve got the most amazing colour and a very jammy flavour,” he says. They’re not widely available, though some supermarkets have them for $15 per kilo.
“It’ll only be a short window of about seven weeks, and along with the green and gold kiwifruit they’re chock full of vitamin C,” Gee says. Prices are likely to drop as the season progresses.
Leaves out
Lettuce and some leafy greens are shooting up in price, say two of the grocers, affected by weather and, in some cases, by rising costs of fuel and fertilisers. “Certain goods will go up, like baby spinach, rocket, salad mix,” Hsu says. Wombok is expensive too. “From $10 each head,” he says.
Mandarins have started to hit the market but are still expensive, Gee says. They’re over $10 a kilo at the Happy Apple, though Gee says prices may drop to “around $4.99 a kilo over the coming weeks”.
Look out for pomegranates and persimmons, which are coming into season but are still a bit pricey. “Around $5 to $6 each,” Gee says. “They vary in size a lot,” Hsu says. “One around the size of your fist is $6. Small ones are about $2 to $3 each.”
Buy:
Apples
Broccoli
Broccolini
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Capsicums
Carrots
Celery
Corn
Feijoas
Grapes
Kale
Leeks
Mushrooms
Pears
Persimmons
Pomegranates
Potatoes
Silverbeet
Sweet potato
Watch:
Chestnuts (prices expected to fall)
Mandarins
Strawberries
Tomatoes (nearing end of season)
Avoid:
Wombok (expensive)
English spinach (expensive)
Lettuce (expensive)
Nectarines (end of season)
Peaches (end of season)
