An early food memory of mine is a summer’s day, crouching with my siblings in a pick-your-own field in Worcestershire, furtively gobbling one strawberry for every four we collected in the paper bag. Those ripe, juicy, sun-warmed fruit are a benchmark the chilled supermarket version struggles to match, but on p23 our food team have used various tricks to maximise the berries’ flavour – and the results are game-changing.
That’s not the only thing in this issue to get the good-asit-can-possibly-be treatment: green peppers (p44), lettuce (p34) and even the much-neglected bean burger (p41) are transformed. I’ll be making the best-of-the-best steak tartare on p72, too – but will I go the whole cow and make the mayo (p59) to dot prettily on top? I like a challenge...