Baking with berries, recipes by Nigel Slater and Mark Diacono
Gooseberries galore
Whilst we have not had a glut, we have had a reasonable gleaning of goosegogs this year, supplemented by just enough jostaberries. There would have been more, but the pigeons and blackbirds were up with the sun and with the worms deep underground during the heatwave the early birds feasted on fruit.
But despite the avian attack, it has been a berry good summer so far.
The first picking went into Mark Diacono’s oat and gooseberry cake, from his tongue tingling book, SOUR. We augmented the green grenades with jostaberries, juicy, ruby flavour bombs (the new Wave band of the late 80s that never quite made it). And as it’s made with porridge oats and fruit, it’s practically muesli, isn’t it? And that vindicates Mark’s assertion that you try it for breakfast, just add yogurt to feel virtuous. We baked it in our 8½” cake tin with its natural non stick finish.
It’s a good job there was a second harvest from the gooseberry bush, because look what turned up in the Observer this week. Nigel Slater dusted off his Netherton Foundry pie dish and as he does not think that gooseberries “make the prettiest tarts”, he decided to “drop them into a cake batter.”
 angled, partial text and bowl of gooseberries.jpg)
This looked so good we couldn’t wait to try it ourselves and although we don’t have the talented Jonathan Lovekin to photograph ours, we think it looks pretty good and tastes even better.
The gooseberry season is all too fleeting – “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” as Nigel says and you will need a good greengrocer or farm shop to find then if you are not lucky enough to have your own gooseberry bush or secret source!
If you can get your hands on a punnet or two of gooseberries then we urge you to try Nigel’s recipe and if your favourite Haribo is a Tangfastic, then get yourself a copy of Mark's book SOUR.
