If you grow fruit you know that it always comes at once and
once started different fruit come in waves one after another.
The first is the rhubarb and the obvious crumble, pies and
stews all with a few chucks of fresh ginger.
The soft fruit the currants white, black and red hanging in
clusters waiting to be picked and smell with childhood memories as they are collected,
usually accompanied by gooseberries which have softened, and if you dare to put
your hands in, give generously. The comes the raspberries in waves up to autumn.
The cherries are a short season which is often shortened
further by the birds who sit there picking at them and then dropping the half-eaten
fruit to the floor just to remind you that they were there first.
We are now into serious baking and stewing. A bowl at breakfast
with Greek yogurt and some granola and fresh orange juice. We get the fresh
oranges from Soller in Mallorca and we could be back in the Mediterranean
sitting here on a sunny morning in London.
After dinner more fresh fruit, this time with custard and
sometimes warmed up.
However, the fruit keeps coming and now the strawberries are
competing for attention.
The blackberries on the path to the allotments are getting
ready to offer themselves up and large yogurt tubs will be frozen for winter
pies.
You can juice some but then what is the point unless you
want to bake cakes and use the rinds and pulp in the cake and the juice for
drizzle? I do like making Polenta cakes with fruit but in winter. However, I
will freeze some for baking cakes later.
All this without the plums, pears and apples!
Some will be wanting to make pressee and cordials or even wine,
but we have never been into the exercise nor following recipes to the letter or,
in the case of wine, waiting. Mind you when the vine give up their grapes this
year we are probably going to have to change our thinking on wine.
Now my wife Annie has found the perfect solution - ice lollies.
No more Magnum and Solera lollies we make our own. Yesterday the moulds arrived.
Today we are eating red and black currant, gooseberry and rhubarb ice lolly.
Wow, and it tastes good and so clean on the palette on this hot day.
We had tried an ice cream maker but found it too much faff
and too much cream and frankly gave up as it took too much space in the freezer.
We spent some time discussing the next batches and also what
we could experiment with. Sweetened yogurt twirled in with stewed or juiced fruit
sounded divine. Yogurt sweetened with honey and added to stewed gooseberries.
The list went on and we realised that we had found another way to use and enjoy
the harvest.
Tutti Frutti!!!!
