Warmer days and longer evenings coax Rimberlieu residents outdoors, some tending their gardens, others taking a leisurely stroll. No longer secluded behind curtained and shuttered windows, neighbours become more neighbourly. But it’s through Yorick, a large floppy black poodle who often wanders from his backyard to ours, that I make friends with Madame Kernavez three houses away.
Madame Kernavez is an enthusiastic cook and knows all the nearby farms and orchards that sell fresh produce. She also tells me there are wild strawberries here. I never imagined finding wild strawberries practically on my doorstep, but there they are. I stumble on them accidentally, growing beside a cleared strip that runs from the crest of the hill down to the sports club. Inconspicuous among the weeds and wild grasses, the low, spreading plants are clearly related to the garden strawberry but the fruits, hiding under the leaves, are minuscule, hardly bigger than a redcurrant. You need sharp eyes to find them. Even at their most prolific, I’m lucky to harvest a cupful in half an hour. Stephanie is keen on picking them but more interested in eating them. At least three out of every four find their way to her mouth.
What these unassuming little fruits lack in size they make up in punch. Deep crimson outside, pearly white within, they have an incomparable intensity of flavour, a three-dimensional flavour that takes time to make its presence felt then lingers, persists, and imprints itself on your memory. And such perfume! Even just a spoonful of the wild fruit transforms a bowl of garden-grown strawberries.
I never imagined that summer would soften the menacing, malevolent forest, cajole it into revealing a kinder side. Now welcoming, with dappled sunshine filtering through the leaves, it surprises me with its gifts. More wild strawberries show their shy faces at the edge of the forest opposite our house, but I’m not going to fight with the blackberries to retrieve them. Venturing a little further I have the thrill of seeing my first wild raspberry and my first wild cherry, a tiny fruit barely bigger than an olive stone. Fruits de la forêt instantly makes sense. It’s also the children’s favourite flavour of yogurt.
Strawberries, raspberries and cherries are the leaders of les fruits rouges, a group of berry fruits that, somewhat paradoxically, also includes green gooseberries and the deep purple-blue blackcurrants, blackberries, elderberries and bilberries (myrtilles). Together and individually they’re emblematic of summer, but the most ubiquitous are the strawberries. French strawberries are powerfully aromatic, especially the large, luscious Périgord strawberries, and you can smell them in the market well before you see them. In Australia strawberries come in small punnets as if they were rationed, but here there is such a profusion that you buy them by the kilo and eat them like apples, one bite at a time.
From early June I take it for granted that there will be strawberries in the market and on our table. Stephanie adores them, especially the strawberry purée that I pour over her petit-suisse. When I see a program on making sorbets on television I know I need an electric sorbetière whose small rotating paddle churns the mixture during the freezing process. With this new device I make sorbet aux fraises and mousse glacée de fraises, and am all prepared to move on to glace aux fraises et à la crème when suddenly, in mid-July, strawberries inexplicably disappear. Stalls that, a week earlier, were overflowing with perfumed strawberries now display other fruit. Pas de fraises après le quatorze juillet, the market lady tells me, shaking her head; she offers no explanation for the abrupt conclusion to the strawberry season, as if this is common knowledge. I turn to other fruits rouges. Raspberries are transformed into a spectacularly successful sorbet de framboises; blackcurrants and redcurrants prove an inspired flavour for my experimental frozen yogurt.
Eventually, at the end of July, the local cherries are ready. The varieties here are different to those of Provence, some pure creamy white with barely a blush of pink, very fleshy and sweet. At last I can attempt the complicated Lenôtre recipe for tartelettes aux cerises that requires me to prepare, first of all, a shortcrust pastry, then a crème patissière and an almond cream to blend with it. I have just taken my tartlets out of the oven when the children wake from an afternoon sleep. Dylan takes one look at them, the cherries pinkly translucent, and exclaims, ‘Nipple tarts!’ He’s right; the fruit takes on a dark, deep pink that is exactly the colour of nipples.
In France, les fruits rouges often find their way into preserves, not only homely jams but also more exotic alcoholic confections. From the beginning of summer supermarkets start stocking eau-de-vie blanche pour fruits, 40% or 60% strength, an inexpensive neutral alcohol specifically destined for homemade liqueurs. I use it to make liqueur de fraises des bois—essentially, wild strawberries, sugar and alcohol. The colour of the strawberries gradually permeates the liquid and the fruits rise to the surface. I leave the jar on the little landing halfway down the stairs to the garage, and whenever I pass it I can’t help lifting the lid to inhale the intoxicating fragrance. I’m never tempted to take a sip; the aroma alone would awaken the souls of the dead.