Recognizing seasonal vegetables at the market
Being able to read a market is a skill. In any city in the world.
There's a test I do when I visit a new city: I go to the market. Not the tourist market with magnets and T-shirts, but the market where residents buy their vegetables.
A market tells you everything. What season it is. How the local cuisine works. Whether a city is proud of its food or has given up on it to supermarkets. The market in Bologna is different from that in Lagos, the market in Oaxaca is different from that in Rotterdam. But the grammar is the same: fresh, local, seasonal.
In the Netherlands we have lost that grammar. The supermarket offers strawberries all year round, tomatoes all year round, everything all year round. The season has disappeared behind the logistics of import.
But those who buy on the market will learn it again. Asparagus in April-June. Strawberries in June-July. Pumpkin in the fall. Kale after the first frost. Every product has a moment when it is the best — and that moment is short.
My father called this "eating with nature." Not as a principle but as a practice. Seasonal food is cheaper (abundance keeps the price down), tastier (shorter chain, harvested more ripe), and healthier (variation throughout the year forces diversity in your diet).
The skill is simple. Go to the market. Look at what's plentiful and cheap — that's the season. Buy that. Ask the greengrocer how to prepare it. That conversation is worth more than any cookbook.