Gooseberry Fool/Mess

I've been helping myself to the fruit on my parents' gooseberry bushes for the past couple of weeks. I made jam with some - with redcurrants and raspberries - but most of them have ended up in the freezer till I decide how exactly to use them. I just kept a few back to try making a gooseberry 'Eton mess'.

Now I was sure I had a recipe for gooseberry fool but couldn't find it easily, so I ploughed straight in, cooking the fruit till soft in my home-made elderflower fizz.

Meanwhile I whisked up an egg white to make small meringues - this is a time I really should have found out a recipe as I cooked them too quickly, ending up with a gooey rather than crisp texture.







The finished 'mess' - gooseberries and meringues layered with Greek yogurt

Green and red don't always make brown

 It's soft fruit season again so time to re-stock the jam cupboard. We have lots of raspberries and redcurrants ripening on the allotment and in the garden ....but... I don't like too many pips in my jam... and I don't like having to sieve it all.






So when I realised my parents' gooseberries were ready to pick, I helped myself to some. I didn't have quite enough raspberries picked so used some redcurrants with them - I always have spare redcurrants!




The recipe I have for gooseberry and raspberry jam suggest boiling all the fruit and then sieving it all but (see above) I don't like sieving! I've never found gooseberries too bitty in marmalade or chutney, so I thought I'd cook and sieve just the red fruit.






I collected the juice and started cooking the gooseberries in it while I got on with sieving.

 At this point I remembered that when mixing paint red and green usually make brown, so started to worry what colour the jam would turn out....

Fortunately, it's a rather lovely shade of pink. It probably won't taste as 'raspberry' as plain raspberry jam but after months of only marmalades it makes a pleasant change.

Chutney from the freezer

 I decided to carry on with the clear out of fruit and veg from the freezer by making gooseberry chutney. I was surprised to find about 5 lbs of gooseberries still waiting to be used, so they haven't all gone yet.

I usually make this recipe up with green gooseberries but I didn't have enough of them so used a mix with a high proportion of red ones.

The finished chutney turned out rather red because of it - and a little strangely 'sweet and sour' in taste.

While the snow falls outside...

....I've been busy (and warm) in the kitchen. First using up a home-grown pumpkin that was starting to rot by making marmalade and then using up gooseberries from the freezer to make some chutney.

Summer jam (and leather) on a dismal day

We've had some really damp dismal weather recently so it seemed that the best thing to do was get in the kitchen and make some summery-scented jam. It's also helpful that this involves clearing things out of the almost full freezer.






This time I went for a mix of raspberries and redcurrants .....





...with all the seeds sieved out....

At this point I put some purée aside for fruit leather. This is my second attempt and this time I spread it thinner to cover a baking sheet.

I'm not sure that it worked any better this way. Most of it dried quite quickly but being very thin, it was difficult to remove from the paper and broke into bits.

To the rest of the purée, I added 3/4 pound of red gooseberries (quite ancient ones from the depths of the freezer) and made into jam.

Wet day in the kitchen

A day of absolutely horrendous rain, and getting drenched while walking the dog, encouraged me to stay in warm and dry and potter in the kitchen.
I bottled up the elderflower fizz started yesterday.
I at last got round to making spiced vinegar for pickling some small onions I bought 2 or 3 weeks ago.
I found the last of last year's gooseberries lurking in the bottom of the freezer and made chutney.
I made two batches of muffins - choc chip and rhubarb.
And now the sun is streaming through the windows and I'm testing a recipe for Persian Stuffed Vine Leaves for dinner.

Gooseberries!

The cupboard where I keep jams and chutneys has been beginning to look a little bare
BUT
the soft fruit is starting to ripen - sometimes a little too much of it at once.

We have lots of raspberries and redcurrants of our own, which are being picked and frozen to be dealt with later, but my parents asked us to help clear their fruit bushes as well so we came home at weekend with more raspberries AND about 6lbs gooseberries.

Time to get out the jam pan!



A few hours of slaving over a hot stove and I have 2 jars of gooseberry chutney and 4 of gooseberry and lemon marmalade.

Jam

a busy week of jam making.

started with 3lb of gooseberries from parents' garden with lemons and a dash of elderflower cordial.

rhubarb, lemon and ginger preserve yesterday - not really to be used as a spread but to add to plain greek yogurt with maybe ginger nuts sprinkled on top

and lastly - and certainly the 'pinkest' - apple and blackcurrant made with 3 1/2 lb of thinnings from the apple trees and about 8oz home grown blackcurrants to add flavour and turn it such a gorgeous colour.

gooseberry chutney

3lb gooseberries - washed, chopped in half
1 1/2 pints vinegar
1tblspn each of black and white mustard seed
8oz onions, finely chopped
1 chilli,finely chopped
1 chunk stem ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspn salt
1lb demerara sugar
8oz granulated sugar


place 2lb gooseberries in a large preserving pan along with 1pint vinegar, mustard seed, onions,chilli,ginger and salt. Boil till the gooseberries have disintegrated - maybe an hour.
add remaining gooseberries, vinegar and the demerara sugar. boil till the fruit is soft - 20-30 mins.
add the granulated sugar and boil till the chutney thickens - 20 mins.
pot into clean,warmed jars.

using what you've got - cooking

seem to have spent the last couple of weeks in a constant state of making jams and chutneys. I've made 2 batches of my "own recipe" gooseberry chutney, 3 jars of gooseberry marmalade, 4 jars of gooseberry,raspberry and redcurrant jam and, today, 6 jars of "mixed berries from the freezer" jam (all unearthed during de-frosting). have also stewed and sieved the thinnings from the apple tree with some blackcurrants to make a lovely cloudy pink purée to flavour yoghurt.

using what you've got

my parents have 2 gooseberry bushes full of unwanted fruit so naturally, when offered some, I've picked-my-own(and some for them). I picked the first batch a fortnight ago and decided to turn it into chutney- we get through a LOT of chutney and pickles- but couldn't find a recipe that matched my store cupboard. So, on the "use what you've got" principle, I took my free fruit, some home-grown and dried chillies, some ginger in syrup(normally for stir-fries), a mix of demerara and common granulated sugar and malt vinegar and, after a while boiling away, have some excellent chutney.
a second helping of gooseberries have gone to make a rather strange-looking but good-tasting marmalade with the help of home-frozen organic orange peel, which gives most of the flavour. some of the gooseberries have had to go to the freezer- I would have preferred to jam/chutney it straight away - storing in a jar isn't a constant drain on the electricity, but the weather this last week has been far too hot to stand over a hot stove.
if you want a recipe for either of these then please leave a comment below. we would love to hear from you.