Gooseberry time

Harvey loved gooseberries - the greener the better, and not too much sugar.  When he was ill he always asked whether they'd appeared in the shops. I was having two close friends for dinner last week, and I knew at least one of them (who grew up in England) loved gooseberries as much as Harvey did. There were only two punnets left at the greengrocer, so I carried them home and started hunting for a good recipe for gooseberry tart. They're a thoroughly English fruit - none of my French or American recipe books mention them. But a Guardian recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was exactly what I was looking for - except that  he used strawberries as well, so I left those out. here's what he says about "goosegogs" (as they're known in some parts of England):

"Usually a soft, pale green, but sometimes golden, or even tinged a gorgeous wine-red, these delicately bristled little fruits are under-appreciated these days. I think this is because they require a little work from the cook, beyond wash and gobble. But that is more than repaid by what they give in return. Few summer fruits rival the goosegog when it comes to complexity, depth and sheer zesty oomph. These characterful berries have a long association with British cooking. Way back in the 1600s, herbalist Nicholas Culpeper talked of them being scalded, baked or eaten raw; there are recipes for them in Hannah Glasse's Art Of Cookery (1747), in Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery (1845) and Mrs Beeton's Book Of Household Management (1861). Gooseberry wine, gooseberry sauce, gooseberry pudding, gooseberry jam and jelly: these simple dishes are gifts from a time when richness of flavour was appreciated as much as sweetness. That flavour is liberated by just the right amount of sugar; always be ready to reach for a little more caster sugar if the cooked fruit is coming up a bit tart…"

Here's my adaptation of his recipe for gooseberries alone – 300g green gooseberries leaves plenty of pastry to curl over the edge. For the pastry, I used the sweet short pastry recipe from Sebastien Lambert at Le Cordon Bleu school in Wellington. 

Gooseberry tart

300g gooseberries

85g caster sugar, plus a little extra to finish
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 tbsp ground almonds
1 egg white, lightly beaten

Top and tail the gooseberries - cut off the tiny tip at the top and the little black remains of the flower on the tail - with a sharp small knife. Combine the berries, sugar and lemon zest in a glass or china bowl, and set aside to macerate for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 200C on "bake" (don't use the fan). Line a large baking tray with baking parchment or nonstick liner – use a tray with a slight edge, as the tart may leak juice while baking.

On a floured surface, roll out the pastry to a rough circle, 2-3mm thick and about 35cm in diameter, and transfer to the baking tray. Sprinkle the ground almonds evenly over the pastry without going right to the edges. 

Spoon the macerated fruit, and any juices, over the pastry, leaving a 3-4cm border. Fold the border inwards over the fruit all around. Brush the pastry edges with the egg white and sprinkle with more caster sugar. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the pastry is a deep gold (my oven took 25 minutes and even that was a fraction too long). Serve warm, with cream or ice-cream.

They loved it, and Harvey would have too, because there wasn't too much sugar. But these were very green berries, some quite small and hard - you'd need a bit less sugar for larger, riper ones. In theory this tart serves four, but there was only a little bit left. So I ate it for breakfast.

Fooling around in the sun

For the second day running, Wellington managed to reach 20C. I had the good luck to be going out for lunch with friends who have a lovely blue tiled table on a covered courtyard, the perfect place to eat outside - especially under Lesley's baskets of cascading blue flowers.

Beneath them, we ate ittle stacks of garlicky tomato and eggplant...

... then terakihi fillets rolled around a fragrant filling of cashew nuts, chili, lime and coriander, with green salad from her sister and  brother-in-law's garden, and crisp brown foccacia...

...and palest pink fool, made from Lesley's own gooseberries (Harvey's favourite early summer treat) and rhubarb.

Fruit fools are thoroughly English desserts, and apparently gooseberry fool is the earliest kind known, dating  back to the fifteenth century. The introduction to Elizabeth David's first recipe for it (in Summer Cooking, 1955) takes you straight back to wartime privations: "Although this is a traditional English dessert it is not often well made, and owing to the lack of cream for so many years a good many people have never made it." Her later recipe in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984) is a better one (I've turned the measurements to metric here).

Gooseberry fool

1kg green gooseberries

250g sugar

300ml cream 

Wash the gooseberries. There is no need to top and tail them [though Harvey always did]. Put them in the top half of a double saucepan with the sugar and steam them, or bake them in a covered glass dish in a low oven, until they are quite soft. 

Sieve them, having first strained off surplus liquid which would make the fool watery. [I think this is the point at which you should taste for sweetness and add more sugar if the puree is too acid. Harvey preferred his quite tart, I like mine a little sweeter.] 

When the puree is quite cold, add the cream. [Elizabeth David didn't whip it, but our cream is not the same as English double cream, and Lesley, like me, prefers to whip it softly before folding it into the puree.] Serve very cold.