Darina Allen: How to make the most popular monkfish dish in our restaurant

Plus why it's a terrific time of year to forage for ‘weeds’ and edible flowers

Try this new recipe for monkfish cheeks with asparagus and butter sauce.

It's a super exciting time of the year for cooks and gardeners. The hungry gap is almost over. We’ve been rewarded with a bumper garden rhubarb harvest this year after we piled on a generous mulch of compost last autumn.

The soil has warmed up so we’re sowing seeds as fast as we possibly can. The ground needs to be between 6- 10°C before seeds will germinate, but of course you can scatter salad leaf seeds into a seed tray on your windowsills or radish seeds into a mushroom chip. (The latter need a greater depth of soil) and will be ready to enjoy, 3-4 weeks from now, depending on whether they are grown inside or outside.