Core values - Britain's best cider

With the cider harvest in full swing, CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, is celebrating National Cider and Perry Month with farm-gate tastings and orchard events nationwide (camra.org.uk/cider).

Unlike chilled and fizzy, artificially produced ciders, real cider and perry, which are produced naturally from apples or pears and are neither carbonated nor pasteurised, are becoming harder to find in pubs. As a result, CAMRA is introducing a new window sticker initiative to make it easier for punters to recognise a genuine cider bar.

Setting the standard is the winner of this year’s CAMRA National Cider Pub of the Year, the Orchard Inn in Bristol. The judges described it as like visiting a daily “mini cider festival”.

The runners up were the Arkwright Arms, in Derbyshire, Penrhyn Arms, in Gwynedd, and the Stand Up Inn, in West Sussex.

For a truly mellow tipple, or three, try Rosie’s Triple D Cider, from Llandegla, in Denbighshire, Seidr Dai Painted Lady Perry, made in Cardiff and Gwatkin Blakeney Red, from Abbey Dore, Herefordshire.

Tuck in to parsnips

Root vegetables are in season and parsnips are plentiful, relatively cheap and full of flavour. They also have a natural sweetness that combines well with beef when roasted together. Avoid huge ones that tend to have a woody core.

Abel and Cole’s golden parsnip and parmesan gratin feeds 4-6 people and makes a handsome supper served with cold ham.

Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6. Butter a gratin dish. Peel 500g parsnips and slice as thinly as possible into rounds. Boil for 5 minutes or steam for 5-10 minutes until soft. Layer roughly in the gratin dish.

Mix together 175ml double cream, 2 cloves crushed garlic, 2 sprigs of thyme, 1 heaped tsp Dijon mustard and a good grating of nutmeg. Season well. Pour over the parsnips and press down so the liquid oozes through the vegetables. Dot the top with butter and cook in the oven for 35 minutes.

Remove from oven and cap generously with Parmesan. Return to oven for 10 minutes, until golden and bubbly.

Celeriac - roots and shoots

Celeriac is in season now and is one of those vegetables that bridge the gap between late summer and winter. The delicate nutty flavour of celeriac works well shredded raw in salads or cooked until soft and creamy in soups and casseroles or with mashed potato.

This seasonal soup combines the subtle flavour of celeriac with the freshness of pears.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large saucepan, add 4 shallots, 2 finely chopped garlic cloves and finely chopped square-inch chunk of ginger and cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes until softened but not coloured.

Add about 800g celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped, 4 ripe pears, peeled, cored and roughly chopped and 1 litre of stock, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the celeriac has softened enough to mash easily.

Blend the soup until super smooth. A small knob of butter gives it a silky finish. Season and serve sprinkled with parsley.

Apples: core strengths

Apples are, arguably, the most English of seasonal fruits. They have been ripening on trees for weeks now but September signals the true start of the apple season.

More than 2,000 varieties have been grown here over the years, many with names that pinpoint their origin such as Keswick Codlin, Kentish Fillbasket and Beauty of Bath. Others bear hints for the palate in their names such as the Pitmaster’s Pineapple, D’Arcy Spice and Blenheim Orange.

Sadly there has been a drastic decline in both the diversity of varieties grown and the number of orchards in the country in recent years. Kent, for instance, has lost 85 per cent of its orchards in the past 50 years.

Farm shops and farmers’ markets offer an excellent choice of locally-grown apples and eyes peeled for English apples in British supermarkets. If you have space in your garden, the Apple Source Book (Hodder & Stoughton, 2007) tells you everything you need to know to plant an apple tree.

A rosehip operation

The bright red seeded berries of the wild rose are known as “hips”. They are found all over the UK, particularly in hedgerows skirting woodland and along footpaths.

Only the thin fleshy covering of rosehips is edible and they are used, most commonly, to make a subtly flavoured syrup that is delicious with ice cream, pannacotta, rice pudding and pancakes. Do not eat rosehips whole, the “itching powder” seeds inside are an irritant.

To make 2 litres of rosehip syrup, you’ll need a jelly bag (available from good cook shops). Boil 1kg of crushed freshly picked rosehips in 1.75 litres of boiling water and allow to stand for 15 minutes.

Pour the rosehip mixture through a jelly bag then repeat the process from the start using the pulp and 900ml boiling water. In a clean pan, reduce the juice, lower heat and stir in 450g caster sugar, boil for 5 minutes then pour into sterilised jars.

Tomato catch up

Homegrown tomatoes are coming into their own now and should have an aroma, taste and even (mis)shape that are more enticing than the uniform packaged varieties available in supermarkets.

Heritage or heirloom tomatoes are making a comeback among allotmenteers and chefs. These are basically old non-hybrid varieties with different flavours, rainbow colours and strange names such as Hillbilly Potato and Green Sausage tomatoes. Search farmers’ markets for the best crops.

In the kitchen, the tomato is such a versatile ingredient. Pizza and pasta aside, big beefy toms can be hollowed out and stuffed with cooked quinoa, feta cubes, toasted pine nuts and parsley then oven roasted; cherry tomatoes make a sweet partner to fish when roasted with a few capers, grated lemon zest and olive oil, and chopped vine tomatoes need no more than finely diced red onions, sea salt, vinegar and oil for a delicious side salad.

To maximise flavour, eat tomatoes at room temperature or even warm but never chilled from the fridge.

Engage with greengages

There are plums and then there are greengages. Bright green and round with greenish-yellow or golden flesh, they have a beautiful sweet scent when ripe and can be used instead of plums for desserts and preserves.

The blogger Pim Techamuanvivit (chezpim.com) has a recipe for greengage and vanilla jam made with 2lb (about 1kg) greengages, 1lb (about 500g) sugar, 2 vanilla pods and the juice of 1 lemon. When cooked down into compote or jam, the fragrant flavour of the greengages intensifies. There’s also a enough acidity to balance the sweetness and plenty of natural pectin in the skin so there’s no need to add extra.

Another blogger, Princess and the Recipe (princessandrecipe.blogspot.com), has adapted Pim’s recipe to make greengage sorbet, substituting lime for lemon and leaving out the vanilla beans. She cools the stewed greengages before they reach a jammy setting point, pushes them through a sieve to get rid of the skins, pops the sieved liquid in the fridge, then churns it in an ice-cream maker.

Sweet as... sweetcorn

The season is short but sweet for sweetcorn, running from now through most of September. A golden buttered corn on the cob is a seasonal delight. It has been cultivated in the south for years but with warmer summers has begun to appear further north, too.

When buying, choose creamy yellow kernels because they will be the sweetest. Eat fresh, as once the cob is cut the sugar starts to turn to starch and loses its sweetness.

Try putting whole cobs in their pale green husks in a roasting tin and roast in the oven preheated to 180C (Gas 4), or on the rack over a hot barbecue for about 30 minutes, turning once. Pull back the husks, add a knob of butter and freshly ground black pepper.

Also in season, baby corn is a specialised vegetable harvested before the kernels develop. The sweet, nutty cobs no bigger than a finger can be cooked whole or cut in chunks and are great in stir fries cooked with sesame oil and soy sauce.

Food for free - blackberries

Blackberries are such a good free source of antioxidants and vitamin C that during World War One children were encouraged to collect them for the production of juice that was sent to soldiers on the frontline.

Ready for gathering now, blackberries can be eaten fresh, used for puddings and pies, or preserved into jelly or “pippy” jam.

They team up particularly well with the first of the cooking apples, are a good match for rich or gamey meat such as venison, lamb or pheasant, and add a seasonal flourish muddled into a cold martini for a late summer cocktail.

For a simple blackberry and oat sundae (serves 2), whisk 150g Greek yoghurt, 3 tbsp crème fraîche and a few drops of vanilla extract together until thoroughly mixed.

Alternately layer lightly crushed blackberries with the yoghurt mixture and handfuls of granola to fill two sundae dishes. For best results chill for an hour.

Plum season

Plums are in season now and this year's combination of a very cold winter and warm spring means bumper crops. Pershore, in Worcestershire, celebrates with a month-long festival featuring plum sausages and other recipes from the festival's Plum Cook Book (pershoreplumfestival.org.uk)

Rosie Lovell of Brixton's retro-feel deli has a recipe for Plum Clafoutis in her new book Spooning With Rosie (£18.99, Fourth Estate).

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Stone and chop 450g of Victoria plums into 2.5cm pieces. Butter a baking dish and scatter the fruit into this. Beat two medium free-range eggs in a bowl and add 50g plain flour so that it forms a smooth paste. Gradually add 75ml double cream and 150ml milk and 50g caster sugar so that it becomes a creamy batter. Add 1 tbsp Calvados before pouring the mix over the fruit. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Serves 4.