There’s a specific moment in late winter when something shifts. It doesn’t happen on a particular date and it has nothing to do with the temperature outside — March in Belfast is perfectly capable of delivering sleet well into the month. But at some point in late February or early March, you stop wanting the long braise and start wanting something lighter. The oven feels like slightly too much. A bowl of warm grains with fresh herbs sounds, for the first time in months, exactly right.
The kitchen notices the season before anything else does.
What arrives first
Purple sprouting broccoli is the reliable harbinger. It appears in markets and good greengrocers from late February, and it’s one of those vegetables that has almost no equivalent at other times of year. The flavour is more intense than calabrese — brassica-forward, slightly bitter, with a sweetness in the stems that cooks out beautifully when the whole thing is roasted with good olive oil until the tips char. Serve it with a good anchovy dressing and you have a dish that feels entirely of the moment in a way that no imported vegetable can replicate.
Spring onions arrive next, milder than the bulb onion but with more complexity than chives. They’re good raw, finely sliced into grain salads or dressings. They’re better charred briefly under a grill and served with something acidic alongside.
New-season garlic — sometimes called wet garlic, though the two aren’t quite the same thing — has a sweetness and freshness that dried garlic can’t match. The cloves are more tender and the flavour is more rounded, less sharp. It doesn’t store the way dried garlic does, but it doesn’t need to. It’s seasonal produce to be used within a week or two of buying.
Fresh herbs begin coming back. Mint first, then flat-leaf parsley, then dill. The greenhouse-grown versions available in winter are fine but notably duller than what appears in spring. The difference isn’t subtle.
The menu changes before you decide to change it
At NOURISH, the shift in the weekly menu follows the produce rather than any deliberate plan. The braised lamb that made complete sense in February starts to feel like the wrong choice. The roasted squash bowl gets replaced by something with freekeh and labneh and fresh herbs. The portions of stew give way to grain bowls, lighter proteins, more raw or barely-cooked elements alongside the cooked ones.
This isn’t a policy — it’s just what happens when you cook with the season honestly. The ingredients themselves are directing things.
On not rushing it
The temptation in early spring is to overcorrect: to abandon warmth entirely and eat as though it’s June. The produce doesn’t support that and neither do the evenings. A grain bowl with roasted vegetables and a tahini dressing is a spring dish. A cold plate of raw salad leaves in the third week of March is wishful thinking.
Good spring cooking holds both things at once: lighter than winter, warmer than summer. Grains served warm rather than hot. Vegetables roasted or griddled rather than slow-braised. Herbs used generously rather than sparingly. A sauce that has some brightness to it — lemon, vinegar, preserved lemon — rather than the deep, reduced richness of a braise.
March is a transition month and it’s worth treating it as one — neither forcing it back towards winter nor pretending it’s something else yet.
The purple sprouting broccoli is enough. For now, it’s more than enough.