It’s crumble time, and in Rome that also means super-juicy persimmons join the usual suspects in this classic winter pud

Every couple of weeks, I catch the number 8 bus (standing in, yet again, for the number 8 tram) to meet my friend Alice and go to a market in Monteverde. Slower than the tram, the bus isn’t a bad ride, curving up the ring road lined with 20th-century apartment blocks in edible colours: lemon, toffee, olive, custard, salmon, milk chocolate, cream, Smurf ice-cream blue … Conveniently, the bus stops right next to the market, which is known by the name of the square it fills: San Giovanni di Dio. There are big plans to redesign it completely, but for now this busy market remains a Tetris-like arrangement of iron boxes – a scheme rolled out in the late 1950s as part of Rome’s preparation for the 1960 Olympics, in which previously open markets were tidied up and vendors allocated boxes with rolling shutters that provided both storage and a stall.

There must be 75 stalls of all sorts, but those run by smaller producers who sell their fruit and vegetables are particularly good. Especially at this time of year, when, like markets all over the northern hemisphere, they are piled with good-value greens and cabbages (and their miniature sprout cousins), celeriac, chicory, celery, beetroot and broccoli, squashes, mushrooms, chestnuts, apples, pears and glowing persimmons, which in Italy (the fourth largest producer after China, Japan and Brazil) take the Japanese name kaki (柿).