Beautiful apricots, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries piled up onto the greengrocers shelves. The blackcurrants and redcurrants are also beginning to ripen in our Currant and Berry garden. The abundance of fruits makes our hearts sing and helps us to forget our woes and count our blessings.
Mother Nature sweetly cheering us up…My grandchildren are in their element crawling in under the netting on the fruit cage to steal the ripest strawberries – sweet, juicy berries, often half the size of the perfect commercial fruit but intensely flavoured from all that delicious sunshine. Can’t wait to drizzle them with a slick of thick yellow Jersey cream and a sprinkling of caster sugar, that’s all the first of the new seasons organic strawberries need but as they become more abundant, I start to search for other delicious ways to enjoy them. One of the simplest is to add shredded mint leaves, a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkling of caster sugar or honey.
Jane Grigson’s Fruit book published in 1982 is a classic, one of my favourite cookbooks of all time. It’s an alphabetical guide to fruit from the apple onwards. It was out of print for a while but is now available again. If you don’t have it, try to source an original – they are a collector’s item. Jane’s beautiful prose and immense knowledge of the history of each fruit makes it bedtime reading…maybe not everyone idea but I find myself licking my lips and longing to get into the kitchen to try some of her suggestions.
Bushby’s Rosscarbery Strawberry Farm (023) 883 8140) and Rose Cottage Fruit Farm in Co. Laois grow a large selection of fruit. Look out for loganberries and tayberries at local Farmers Markets and the Wexford strawberries are along the roadside right up as far as the Midlands.
Don’t forget to use lots of fresh herbs with fruit of course elderflower with gooseberries but it’s also delicious added to syrup to poach other stone fruit, peaches, pears and nectarines. The Ballymaloe sweet geranium is another must have to add a magical haunting lemony flavour to so many dishes.
A glut of fruit is an opportunity to make a few pots of jam. Strawberries are low in pectin, the substance that helps with gelling. Jam made with commercial strawberries that are constantly irrigated seem to be even more difficult to set. Some people use jam sugar which I’ve never been fond of partly because the jam can easily end up the texture of ‘bought jam’ so what’s the point of making your own. I recently discovered that jam sugar also has hydrogenated palm oil which I try to avoid at all costs. However don’t fret, fruits that are low in pectin like the aforementioned strawberries can be combined with fruits with high pectin e.g. redcurrants which by a happy coincidence of nature both are in season at the same time. We’ve had a brilliant crop of red, white and black currants. The latter won’t be ready for a few weeks.
Look out for wild strawberries too, divinely sweet. We’ve also got a patch of wild raspberries, watch out for them around the country and soon there will be blueberries…
