Balsamic Strawberries with Clotted Cream Rice Pudding
Eton Mess with Clotted Cream
Strawberry Galette with Clotted Cream
Rose Hilton’s Strawberry Cheesecake Birthday Tart
Strawberry Jam
Custard Gooseberry Fool
Gooseberry Frangipane Tart
Baked Rhubarb with Orange Semolina Pudding
Rhubarb or Gooseberry Pie
Some of the sweetest and most intensely flavoured strawberries I’ve ever eaten have been grown in this part of Cornwall. When the conditions are right, the plants are extra prolific down here and it’s common to come across impromptu road-side stalls selling gluts of succulent little strawberries at bargain prices. They are, of course, the perfect foil for clotted cream. Together they appear in milk shakes, fools, rice pudding, cream teas and summer pudding.
Gooseberries and rhubarb don’t have the general appeal of strawberries and other soft fruit, yet they make the most sublime desserts of summer. What would an English summer be without stewed goose-berries and custard, gooseberry pie (with ice cream) or gooseberry fool? On chilly summer days, it is hard to beat gooseberry crumble. The tart, fresh flavour, redolent, as Elizabeth David noted, of sorrel, has savoury applications too. A tart purée of gooseberries, perhaps whipped with creamed horseradish, goes well with mackerel, goose and duck, complementing and counterbalancing the oily quality of the flesh.
Rhubarb comes originally from northern Asia, where it was prized for it’s medicinal use. It has the ability to give the digestive tract a good spring clean, with the added advantage of being packed with vitamins and minerals. It was the Victorians who discovered that the hardy, fast-growing, early spring shoots were delicious in cooking. It’s weird name, incidentally, is derived from the Latin ‘Rha’ (the ancient name for the Volga, the route by which rhubarb came to the West via Siberia) and ‘barbarus’, which means barbarian. Rhubarb has a high water content and collapses easily when cooked. To keep it firm, cover the cut stems in a minimum amount of liquid and cook gently. It can be stewed, baked or poached and is particularly good in pies and crumbles, steamed puddings and fools. Rhubarb is classified as a vegetable and although commonly used as a fruit, like gooseberries, it makes a lovely tart sauce to serve with pork or duck and it can be delicious with lamb. Its huge ornamental leaves are poisonous.
Which brings me neatly to the only joke I have ever been able to remember:
What’s green and hairy and goes up and down?
A gooseberry in a lift shaft.
Sorry about that.
A classy way to ring the changes with strawberries. Lovely on their own but superb with this quick, really creamy rice pudding.
750g ripe strawberries
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp aged balsamic vinegar
for the rice pudding:
1 vanilla pod
900ml milk
150g pudding rice 50g sugar
150ml clotted cream
First make the rice pudding. Place the vanilla pod in a pan with the milk and bring to boiling point. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 5 minutes. Give the vanilla pod a good bash with a wooden spoon to release the seeds. Add the rice. Simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or until the rice is tender and most of the liquid absorbed. Stir in the sugar. Add half the cream and cook for a couple of minutes until thick but sloppy. Leave to cool (and thicken) in the pan. When tepid, remove the vanilla pod (it can be wiped and reused) and stir in the rest of the cream. Transfer to a serving bowl.
Rinse the strawberries and remove their stalks. Halve or quarter large strawberries lengthways into a mixing bowl. Sprinkle with the sugar and leave for a few minutes to get juicy. Add the balsamic vinegar. Toss thoroughly and leave for at least 10 minutes before serving.
Mushy strawberries with cream and chunks of meringue.
800g very ripe English strawberries
2 tbsp caster sugar
400g clotted cream
12 mini meringues (optional)
Quickly rinse the strawberries under cold running water and shake dry. Remove the stalks – the neatest way to do this is with a small, sharp knife, cutting at an angle around and under the stalk, to remove a small cone, turning the strawberry rather than the knife. Leave small strawberries whole, halve medium ones and quarter large fruit. Place the fruit in a bowl, sprinkle over the sugar and leave to melt and turn the strawberries juicy. Toss and leave for at least 10 minutes, then give a quick stir, crushing them slightly as you do so. Add scoops of the cream to the strawberries, then gently fold and stir. If using meringues, break them into quarters and loosely fold into the fool. If you prefer, hold back half the strawberries, then pass them through a sieve directly into the fool, stirring to get swirls of seed-free strawberry purée.
My mother was friendly enough with our local baker, a fierce lady called Tessa Battle (no prizes for guessing her nickname), that she occasionally gave us slightly bashed-up pastries and cakes unfit for sale in her quaint little bakery-cum-tearoom. My favourite was strawberry millefeuille and this super-simple tart is distantly related, giving the same sublime combination of light, crisp pastry and strawberries muddled up with lashings of cream. It can be made to whatever size or shape you like and is a usefully hassle-free dessert for a summer party.
icing sugar
knob of butter
250g puff pastry
750g small ripe strawberries
25g toasted almonds
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6. Dust a work surface with icing sugar and roll the pastry thinly to fit an oblong approximately 25 × 30cm. Liberally butter a baking sheet and lay out the pastry. Prick all over with the tines of a fork, dust with icing sugar and cover loosely with a double fold of greaseproof paper. Bake for 10 minutes until the surface is brown and semi-risen. Remove the paper, cook for a further 5 minutes, then use an egg slice to flip the pastry. Press down to flatten and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes until flaky and golden. Flatten the now thoroughly cooked pastry again if necessary. Slip on to a cake rack to cool completely.
Meanwhile, rinse the strawberries, shake dry and remove the stalks, cutting them out with a small, sharp knife, cutting at an angle around and under the stalk, to remove a small cone, turning the strawberry rather than the knife.
Spread the cream thickly over the cold, crisp pastry, going right up to the edges. ‘Plant’ the strawberries on top. Sprinkle with the almonds and dust with icing sugar. Serve in chunky slabs.
NB: This tart can be assembled up to an hour in advance but to avoid the almonds going soft, add them until just before serving.
The artist Rose Hilton’s birthday falls in the middle of August and every year she holds a big lunch party, usually in the garden, to celebrate. It’s a lovely wild kind of garden, with ancient but comfortable chairs, where children can safely roam into meadows beyond, which lead, eventually, to the dramatically severe Bottallack coastline. It’s quite normal for guests to bring something towards lunch and one year I made two cheesecake tarts and decorated one with an R made of peach against a strawberry background and another with an H made of black grapes against a ‘palatte’ of green ones. They looked beautiful and tasted so good that the recipe has joined the Fish Store pudding repertoire.
salt
50g lard
100g butter plus an extra knob
2 tbsp sugar
2 × 125g packets Philadelphia cream cheese 1 tsp vanilla essence
2 heaped tbsp thick cream
500g English strawberries
2 tbsp redcurrant jelly or similar
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6. Sift the flour and a generous pinch of salt into the bowl of a food processor or mixing bowl. Dice the lard and 50g butter directly into the flour and, if using a machine, pulse briefly until formed into a ball. Alternatively, rub the fat into the flour with your hands and form it into a ball. Rest the dough for at least 15 minutes, preferably 30 minutes. This allows the gluten to stretch and thus avoids the pastry shrinking as it cooks. Chose a flan tin with a removable base with an approximately 22cm diameter. Grease it generously with a knob of butter, going over the sides as well as the base. Dust with flour, rolling the tin round in your hands, and shake out any excess. This makes the tin non-stick. Roll out the pastry to fit the tin, coming up the sides and rolling the edges to make a good lip. Cover loosely with foil, add pastry weights or rice to stop the pastry rising and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes until the pastry is a light golden colour and cooked through. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, place the remaining 50g butter in a mixing bowl and add the sugar. Use a wooden spoon to cream the two together, continuing for several minutes until the mixture is light, fluffy and pale and the sugar hardly distinguishable. Pass the Philadelphia through a sieve directly into the creamed butter; this will make the mixture lighter and creamier. Now add the vanilla essence and cream. Beat all the ingredients together until smooth and light. Rinse and hull the strawberries. If you are going for looks as well as flavour, arrange the strawberries on a dinner plate with the biggest one in the middle and ending up with the smallest strawberries at the edge. Smooth the Philadelphia mixture into the cooled pastry case and transfer the strawberries. Melt the redcurrant jelly in a small pan and use a pastry brush to paint the strawberries to give them a glossy professional finish. Stand the tart on a can or similar to remove the collar and stand back for ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ahs’.
Strawberries make intensely flavoured jam but are notoriously poor setters. That’s where the redcurrants come in. Lovely with scones for a Cornish cream tea or on toast spread with clotted cream instead of butter. Excellent, too, with rice pudding and in tarts.
800g sugar
1kg firm but ripe strawberries
250g redcurrants
knob of butter
Warm the sugar and place in a suitable pan with the hulled strawberries. Leave overnight.
The next day, wash the redcurrants and place, stalks and all, in a pan with just enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, mash with a wooden spoon and simmer for 15 minutes.
Bring the strawberries and sugar very slowly to the boil, then boil rapidly for 8 minutes. Pour the redcurrants through a sieve, pressing down to extract maximum juice, directly into the strawberries. Stir and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in the butter, stir for 5 minutes, then pot into jars.
It isn’t traditional to include custard in gooseberry fool but it gives it a pleasing nursery-food quality, turning this lovely dessert into deluxe stewed gooseberries and custard. Don’t be tempted to add extra sugar – the whole point of the dish is the contrast of the sour, soft berries and very sweet custard and cream.
500g green cooking gooseberries
50g caster sugar
1 tbsp cold water
300ml fresh (carton) custard
150ml clotted cream
Top and tail the gooseberries, rinse and shake dry. Put sugar, water and gooseberries in a pan and place over a low heat. Shake the pan as the sugar melts and the juices from the gooseberries begin to run. As soon as the gooseberries have paled in colour, turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave for 10 minutes so the fruit finishes softening in the steam. Remove the lid and let the fruit cool.
If the gooseberries have produced a lot of juice – very likely – drain some of it away and use a potato mashed to squash and break up the fruit. Pour the cold custard into a serving bowl, stir in the crushed gooseberries and add spoonfuls of cream. Mix in a haphazard kind of way and tip the whole thing into a pretty bowl or glass dish. Chill before serving.
Frangipane is made by mixing ground almonds with egg, sugar and butter to make a thick and gluey paste which billows as it cooks and ends up as a glorious, dense almond sponge. In this tart, the frangipane swells over and around blanched gooseberries and is ready when the surface has risen to the edge of the pastry and turned an attractive pale golden colour.
This recipe can be adapted for use with plums, cherries, apricots and raspberries.
200g plain flour
pinch salt
100g butter
2 tbsp natural yoghurt or water 400g gooseberries
2 tbsp sugar
100g ground almonds
2 eggs
Pre-heat the oven to 375°F/190°C/gas mark 5. Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl (or the bowl of your food processor). Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the flour. Either quickly rub the butter into the flour until it resembles damp breadcrumbs or pulse in the food processor. Stir or briefly pulse the yoghurt into the mixture, until the dough seems to want to cling together. Form into a ball; dust with extra flour if it seems too wet, adding a little extra yoghurt or water if it seems too dry. To avoid shrinkage when the pastry is cooked, cover and leave for 30 minutes before rolling. Butter a 20cm loose-bottomed flan tin and roll out the pastry to fit. Cover with tinfoil and weight it with rice. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, top and tail the gooseberries and place in a saucepan with the 2 tablespoons of sugar and not quite enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat immediately and cook for 1 minute. Drain the gooseberries and leave to cool. Blitz the ground almonds, butter and caster sugar in a food processor for 1 minute. Add the eggs and pulse briefly until blended. Arrange the gooseberries in the pre-baked pastry case, pour over the frangipane and bake until the top is firm, risen and golden, checking after 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before removing the collar. Serve in wedges.
When I was growing up, in fifties post-post-war Britain, hardly a week went by without a milk pudding making an appearance on the supper table. Rice pudding, tapioca, custard, a sweet white sauce made with cornflower, and semolina. What all these traditional British puddings share is the ability to be absolutely ghastly, and semolina is possibly the worst culprit. However, when made with care – it has a nasty habit of forming into lumps – the milk well seasoned and a couple of eggs added, it is sublime.
I’ve divided the cooking into three distinct stages which make it foolproof and result in a creamy, hauntingly flavoured, soufflé-like pudding with a pleasingly crusted surface. The rhubarb is cooked at the same time in the oven and the gentle, slow cooking ensures the chunks don’t float apart into silky strands. Both semolina and rhubarb are delicious on their own (try passion fruit over the rhubarb) but go together in one of those culinary marriages made in heaven, specially when eaten with a dusting of extra sugar and a dollop of clotted cream. Like all milk puddings, this is best served warm. Semolina, incidentally, is ground from durum wheat, used to make pasta.
2 medium oranges 750ml milk
1 vanilla pod
4 tbsp demerara sugar 50g semolina
pinch of salt
2 large eggs
freshly grated nutmeg knob of butter
500g rhubarb
caster sugar
Use a potato peeler to remove the wafer-thin zest from one orange. Place 4 strips in a saucepan with 600ml of the milk and the vanilla pod. Bring slowly to the boil, allowing about 10 minutes for this, giving the vanilla pod a good bash to release its tiny black seeds. Remove from the heat, stir in 2 tablespoons of the demerara, cover the pan and set aside. Meanwhile, place the remaining milk, semolina and pinch of salt in a small pan. Place over a low flame and stir constantly while it thickens. It will quickly stiffen up. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile, separate the eggs and use a wooden spoon to stir the yolks into the semolina, thus slackening the mixture. Season generously with nutmeg. Pour the flavoured milk through a sieve into the mixture, first a cupful, stirring until smooth, and then continue with the rest. You shouldn’t have any lumps, but if you do, give the mixture a good beating with a wire whisk. Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites into firm peaks. Fold the whites into the mixture and pour the semolina into a buttered earthenware or ceramic gratin dish.
Cut the rhubarb into chunks, discarding root and silky strands that present themselves. Rinse and lay out in a gratin dish. Tuck the remaining orange zest between the layers, squeeze over the juice of the oranges and sprinkle over the remaining demerara. Cover with foil. Turn the oven to 325°F/170°C/gas mark 3, place the rhubarb near the bottom and when the temperature comes up put the pudding on a middle shelf. Cook for 30 minutes or until the pudding has a golden surface and is just-set and the rhubarb tender.
Simply the best. Lovely buttery, crumbly, sugary pastry and slightly tart fruit with lashings of clotted cream and maybe some ice cream too.
400g flour plus extra for dusting pinch of salt
200g butter or half butter and half lard 3–6 tbsp cold water
750g rhubarb or gooseberries
50g butter
4–5 tbsp caster sugar
1 egg white
clotted cream or ice cream to serve
Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl (or the bowl of your food processor). Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the flour. Either quickly rub the butter into the flour until it resembles damp bread-crumbs or pulse in the food processor. Stir or briefly pulse a couple of tablespoons of cold water into the mixture, continuing tentatively until the dough seems to want to cling together. Form into a ball; dust with extra flour if it seems too wet, adding a little extra water if it seems too dry. To avoid shrinkage when the pastry is cooked, cover and leave for 30 minutes before rolling. Set aside just over one-third of the pastry. Lavishly butter a suitable metal pie dish, dust with flour and shake out the excess. Dust a work surface with flour, roll out the large piece of pastry and line the pie dish leaving a generous overhang.
Pre-heat the oven to 375°F/190°C/gas mark 5. Trim the rhubarb and cut into 5cm lengths. Top and tail the gooseberries. Pile the fruit into the pastry case, cut scraps of butter over the top and dredge with most of the sugar. Roll out a lid, place in position, trim the edges neatly, smear with a little water and crimp the edges together with a fork or your thumbnail. Lightly whisk the egg white and paint it over the pie. Cut out decorative shapes with any pastry leftovers. Sprinkle with sugar. Slash the pastry in a couple of places to allow the steam to escape. Cook in the oven for about 40 minutes or until the pastry is cooked.