Autumn arrives in the kitchen before it arrives anywhere else. Quince appear at farm shops looking like failed experiments — waxy, rock-hard, faintly yellow — and most people walk past them. That's a mistake. Pam Corbin's trick of poaching them whole before peeling sidesteps the single most discouraging thing about the fruit: it's nearly impossible to peel raw without risking a finger. Cook them whole until soft, cool, discard the core, blitz. The result is floral, deeply aromatic, and unlike anything you'll get from a jar. The apple section is the most useful advice in the piece, and the most quietly political. Of the thousands of apple varieties that exist, supermarkets stock perhaps six — chosen for shelf life and uniformity, not flavour. Egremont Russet, Worcester Pearmain, Cox's Orange Pippin: these are the varieties that remind you why apples have been cultivated for millennia. Buying direct — Riverford is one route — isn't food snobbery, it's just refusing to accept that grocery logistics should determine what you taste. Leeks get perhaps the best single recipe here: wrapped in foil with olive oil and a sliced garlic clove, roasted in a moderate oven for forty minutes. No technique required, no skill barrier. The foil traps steam and the leek essentially braises in its own liquid. It's the kind of cooking that makes you wonder why you ever bothered with a frying pan. The squash advice matters more than it sounds. Butternut is everywhere and fine, but Uchiki Kuri (also called Red Kuri), crown prince, and acorn table squash have complexity that butternut lacks — nuttier, denser, less watery. The instruction to roast unpeeled is practical and correct: the skin of most of these varieties softens enough to eat, and it holds the flesh together. Porcini and chanterelle season peaks in September and October, after warm weather followed by rain. The recommendation of John Wright's River Cottage Mushrooms handbook for field identification is well-placed — foraging without reliable ID is genuinely dangerous, and Wright's book is the standard reference in the UK. Fresh fungi are also available online if foraging isn't feasible. The garden notes at the end — sow broad beans now, harvest squash with a short stalk to prevent rot, ripen tomatoes with a banana for the ethylene — are practical and specific. These aren't filler. The broad bean timing is one most gardeners get wrong by a month.
