May is where spring properly settles in & cooking starts to feel effortless
By this point, you’re no longer waiting for ingredients to arrive, they’re here. The shift that starts in April becomes more consistent, more reliable. You’re not searching for ways to lift heavier produce anymore, you’re just working with things that already feel alive.
As a cook, it’s one of the easiest times of year. Not because it requires less effort but because the ingredients do more of the work for you.
White asparagus
White asparagus is one of those ingredients that feels very deliberate.
Grown without sunlight, it stays pale, tender and slightly more delicate than its green counterpart. The flavour is softer, a little more rounded but still unmistakably asparagus.
It’s also something that benefits from restraint. You can do a lot with it but you don’t really need to.
For our dinner at Full of Graze on May 30th, we’re serving it simply with smoked bacon and a sharp, Alsatian-style sauce. Mustard, pickles, extra virgin oil & a bit of acidity to cut through everything.
It’s a classic way of approaching it for a reason.
You’ve got the softness of the asparagus, the salt and smoke from the bacon and then something piquant to bring it all into focus. Nothing complicated, just a classic combination that works really well.
Radishes
Radishes are one of the first things that really taste like spring.
Peppery & fresh, they’ve got a clean heat to them. Not overpowering, just enough to wake everything else up. There’s also a texture to them that’s often overlooked. Crisp, almost sharp, especially when they’re at their best.
They’re easy to treat as a garnish, something to slice thinly and scatter over the top of a dish at the last minute. But they deserve a bit more thought than that.
For the same dinner at Full of Graze, we’re using them in a salad of crab with fennel and grapefruit.
It’s a light dish, but quite structured in flavour. Sweetness from the crab, aniseed from the fennel, bitterness from the grapefruit and then the radish cutting through everything with that fresh, peppery edge.
It’s a small part of the dish, but without it, it wouldn’t quite work the same way.
Lemon thyme
One of the most underrated herbs there is.
It’s softer than regular thyme, more lifted with that citrus note running through it. It’s great stuffed into a chicken before roasting or infused into a cream sauce to serve alongside fish, but for me It works particularly well in desserts, where you want something aromatic without it becoming heavy or overly sweet.
At our 6 or 7 course dinners, we always serve 2 sweet courses (Mainly because I’m a greedy b*astard) the first of which is usually a ‘crossover course’, something a litter different and nuanced than just a plate of sweet stuff.
At Môr on May 7th, we’re using lemon thyme in one of these ‘crossover dishes with Earl Grey blancmange and honey.
The base is quite soft and rounded, the bergamot from the tea, the richness of the cream and then the lemon thyme just sharpens it slightly & keeps it from becoming too monotone.
The honey comes from Tonyrefail Apiary, which in my opinion, produces some of the best honey in the UK. It’s got real depth to it, not just sweetness. And like most things this time of year, it doesn’t need much handling. Just a bit of thought around how everything fits together.
By May, you start to trust the ingredients a bit more.
You don’t feel the need to build layers for the sake of it, or to compensate for what’s missing. The produce has enough clarity on its own. That changes how you cook.
Dishes become a bit simpler, a bit more direct. Not in a lazy way, just in a more confident one.
You start taking things away rather than adding to them.
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If April is where things begin, May is where it settles into place.
Everything feels a bit more natural.
And as a cook, that’s about as good as it gets.
Tom
Chef & Owner, Bohémien
