I miss the tomatoes my father used to grow. Dense, sweet, red fruit hung on dozens of vines that were well over 170cm in height. He would prop them up with old wooden stakes that he would retrieve in late spring from the locked cubby hole under the back stairs where they had sat since last summer. He would hammer them in to the earth using a large mallet, tying up the growing vines with strips of old fabric, remnants of mamma’s old sheets. There they would grow, straight and tall, helped along by his expert pruning. You could smell the tomatoes growing from the back door of the house, the sweet and herbaceous scent of summer.

I adore red radicchio not only for its vibrant colour but for its bitter flavour. I qualify it with the “red” as radicchio can also be green, yellow, white or pink and is part of the chicory (cicoria) family. The “radiceto” that I grew up eating is actually called “cicoria zuccherina di Trieste” or sweet chicory from Trieste, a sweet leafy salad green that grows progressively bitter as the plant matures.

A common advertising line is that mushrooms are “meat for vegetarians”. Although I don’t think this is accurate where my palate is concerned they are a big part of my autumn/fall menu at home. My usual go-to recipe is risotto, but a pot of soup hits the spot in colder weather. I used a selection of wild mushrooms (Slippery Jack and pine mushrooms) but you could use any mushrooms you like. Adding potatoes to the soup thickens it beautifully and a dollop of crème fraiche or thick Greek yoghurt gives it a lovely richness.