JULY
July
is a soft month, as the Irish say. Full of raspberries and logan berries, blackcurrants and red currants,
for eating with sugar and cream, or making into tartlets or flans. The fruit season reaches its peak in
July and August. It is the month for soft delicate soups like cucumber, tomato and orange, watercress.
Vegetables are also at their most
varied and plentiful – so go out and buy, bottle, freeze and preserve ready for the coming year. Watch
out most particularly for the short-lived vegetable crops – asparagus, peas, French beans, corn-on the-cob.
Some years there will be a glut. In others the crop may be over before you even realise it is on. Try calabrese – a much valued variety of the humble
cauliflower, as good as asparagus and treated the same way. Buy young French beans which snap crisply with
no string, best cooked whole, and served with butter and seasoning. Cold, they make an excellent Nicoise
salad with lettuce, tomato, olives and tuna fish.
July is a great month for outdoor dinner parties and drinking up the setting sun.
It is particularly a month for wine. Wines celebrate this month dedicated to Julius Caesar.
For although the Romans were well used to wine drinking – Pliny lists 116 varieties – it was Caesar’s
reign that a choice of four was offered for the first time at a banquet. Try delicate pink salmon and a
soft white wine from the Loire. Or a Sancerre, Muscadet, or cold Anjou rose, to wash away the memory of
a hot, dry day in the city.
