Glorious Gooseberries
Sun, Sea. Sand. Shingle. Oh we do love to be beside the seaside! Usually we prefer the South of France, Italy, Spain, or Greece – anywhere but a UK beach, but faced with a recession, air strikes, train strikes and volcanic ash, suddenly marvellous Morecombe, heavenly Holkham, wonderful West Wittering are the places we want to be. Time, then, to discover the joys of British beaches… and this summer we are in luck; the weather has been unusually warm and sunny.
Food always tastes better eaten outside, and seafood tastes best on the beach. Today we are on an immaculate, steeply sloping beach at Porthcurno in Cornwall, not far from Land’s End. There is white sand and a sea so improbably turquoise that it must have come from the Caribbean. Crabs, mussels, whelks and winkles abound - their chewy, nuttiness reminds me of childhood holidays at the seaside with Granny. We swam in the sea and turned blue. Yet I recall that heat came and stayed in the summers of my youth, as if the nation was set constantly at gas mark 2. Granny’s beach attire consisted of grey lisle stockings held up with garters, a long grey skirt and a black hat secured with a dangerous hatpin. She always carried a brolly just in case. But she knew how to deal with winkles. Best boiled in seawater on the beach where they were gathered. We collected a few sticks and had brought some newspaper with us. We lit a meagre fire - all that was needed to cook them for a couple of minutes. Picked out of their shells with Granny’s hat pin and served with brown bread and butter. Delicious. And then we begged Granny to unwrap the layers of newspaper that was keeping her homemade gooseberry ice cream frozen and let us tuck in. We licked and sucked and swallowed it with Garibaldi biscuits that we called ‘squashed fly biscuits’. Do they still exist?
Our July lunch was only marginally more sophisticated. It consisted of a seafood platter, washed down with Chablis, gaps filled with chunks of crusty French bread and unsalted butter, and Gooseberry Fool for dessert. And a Lemon and Almond Cake with Amaretti Semifreddo at tea-time. The children would have loved ice cream but homemade ice cream is more appealing as an idea than in practice, unless you have access to an all-singing, all-dancing ice cream maker, which in Cornwall we didn’t. This is where the joys of a semifreddo come in: you don’t need a machine. Semifreddo is the antidote to all the patience Granny must have required to churn her ice cream and keep it frozen. Semifreddo is criminally easy, and very creamy. Half frozen, it is a soft, snowflake mirage of a pudding. Slice it, don’t scoop it.
Gooseberries always coincide with the holidays. They are only around for three or four weeks from July to the beginning of August so we try to make the most of them. I love this old-fashioned tart, juicy fruit – excellent made into a silky sauce with local fresh mackerel but even better made into gooseberry ice cream, gooseberry fool with elderflower, gooseberry pie, or gooseberry semi-freddo studded with crushed almonds. Quintessentially part of the English summer the first record of gooseberry bushes being imported was 1276. By the 18th century our passion for the sweet-sour fruit knew no bounds; tolerant of our damp, cool climate this hairy fruit on its prickly bush not only survived but thrived. As well as the small, green cooking variety that we still can buy today there were huge dessert gooseberries in deep russet colours. Nestled under the folds of netting in Granny’s fruit garden – the birds couldn’t get to them but the grandchildren ate the lot. Unfortunately this heritage fruit is now rather out of fashion. Babies are no longer told that they were found under a gooseberry bush; we can, however, still play gooseberry and find ourselves left out. Maybe with the recession making us look afresh at the joys of the British seaside we should aim to re-instate the neglected gooseberry and let it once again join the good food party.
Gooseberry Fool with Elderflower Recipe
Amaretti Semifreddo with Lemon & Almond Cake Recipe
Old fashioned Gooseberry Pots Recipe
Gooseberry Semi-Freddo Ice cream Recipe
Theo Hodges
Theo Hodges was born in Kent. After a degree in Graphic Design she joined J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency as an Art Director working on accounts such as Rowntrees, Kraft and The Butter Council. While she was at University in Perugia, Italy she started collecting recipes from friends and family. In 1980 she set up her own design agency: Theo Hodges Design Consultants. For many years when they were young Theo, her sister and six cousins used to spend vacations at her Grandmother’s Victorian vicarage in Kent. ‘The thing about remembering childhood’ she says, is ‘there’s a whole lot of oblivion, and then out of it something floats up, quite sharp and clear. Many of the meals I can still see vividly and various recipes of mine were originally from Granny’s kitchen. ‘The kitchen garden was stuffed with raspberries, huge red dessert gooseberries, strawberries, runner beans, peas and much more with the hens in a shed at the back. But Granny only ate chicken breast and runner beans, followed by raspberries and Jersey cream - and therefore so did we. When raspberries were out of season, and in those days the season was much shorter, Granny made Victoria sponge cakes sandwiched with cream and home-made raspberry jam. On this limited but delicious diet we all thrived’. Theo’s mother was an excellent cook as well, and had been taught by the house- keeper at their house in Mougins, South of France. And once rationing was withdrawn in England in 1952 and good, fresh ingredients became available again, she amassed an enormous number of recipes which has formed the basis for Theo’s collection of family desserts.