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Nigel Slater’s recipes for apple and blackberry pie, butternut tart and peaches with blackcurrant sauce
Autumn’s orange and purple plenty fills pies, tops tarts and sings roasted to go in main dishes
The market stalls are a tapestry of ochre and dark green. There are fat pumpkins and bunches of cavolo nero; early parsnips and chard entwined with late peaches and blackberries. There are apples for a pie, the first local pears (conference, as crisp as a sheet ice) hazelnuts and the first chestnuts. Food shopping doesn’t get better than this.
The first pumpkins are startling, their presence a sudden reminder that the year is waning. I might buy one or two for the house – simply for the beauty of their curves and dimples, but as far as cooking goes, they can wait a week or two. They will have much work to do this winter – and, instead, I bring home a shiny-skinned and user-friendly butternut. Destined to end its days as a tart filling with onions and pine nuts, the butternut weighs less in the bag than the fat turban pumpkins. I will steam the flesh and tuck it into the filling of pie. This is the first of the vegetable pies and tarts that I look forward to so much as the evenings darken.