Stephen Wheeler informs us about beautiful berries in high summer
It's the height of summer, and chefs are looking for great tasting local soft fruits. Strawberries are past their first flush, making way for the dessert fruit par excellence, the raspberry. Their origin was attributed to divine intervention when the nymph Ida pricked her finger while picking white-coloured berries for Jupiter, and for my money, her blood was well spent I prefer a bowlful of raspberries to any other berry fruit.
In past hard times, raspberries were considered to be such a delicacy that fake raspberry jam was made using pureed rhubarb and tiny pieces of beech wood to replicate the seeds. Nowadays raspberries are an important commercial fruit crop and grown in all temperate regions of the world.
In Britain we grow 8,000 tonnes a year – a modest two per cent of world production. Greenhouse raspberries are available from April, but don’t have the flavour of those grown in open soil from July to October. There are 200 varieties including ones with golden and purple berries. Supermarkets now put the variety on their labels – watch out for my favourite‘tulamine’ – large, firm berries with exactly the right mixture of sweet and sourness, perfect for dotting all over a lemon cheesecake and smothering in cream.
At Mise en Place we have also now started selling local cultivated blackberries that crop a month before the hedgerow varieties. Being a close cousin to the raspberry, an American horticulturist, James Logan, cross-bred them to produce Loganberries, and more recently the cross Tayberry was developed in Scotland and named after the river. Many of us wait for those golden Sunday afternoons in September, strolling along country lanes eating and picking blackberries for homemade jam and crumbles. There’s an old saying that blackberries are “red when they’re green”, meaning they tend to be red in their under-ripe stage. I mentioned divine intervention earlier. Diabolic superstition has it that blackberries shouldn’t be picked after Michaelmas (September 29), as the Devil has claimed them by urinating on the leaves, leaving an obvious stain. But don’t let that put you off now. Mix raspberries and blackberries with some local redcurrants and serve up a delicious summer pudding.
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24th July 2010
Summer pudding
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