Master it: How to cook today

‘The trick is to be able to recognise what fruit, local or otherwise, is at its best at any particular time of the year and to use it then.’

When I was learning how to cook, making a perfect fruit salad was regarded as one of the most difficult tasks in the pastry kitchen. In theory the task was a simple one: fresh fruit chopped or sliced and sweetened. What could be the problem? The problem was the same one that applies to many ‘simple’ dishes: it is all in the detail. The biggest issue was what combination of fruit to use and to ensure that the various fruit were in perfect condition. This called for a bit of organisation and careful ordering to get the slower-ripening and more quickly-ripening fruit ready on the same day. After that, the detail was in how evenly and to what thickness the fruit was sliced, how much sugar to use so as to enhance but not over-sweeten the fresh taste of the fruit, and how to mix the fruit without breaking and spoiling it. None of the problems were enormous ones, but they all needed careful consideration.

Compotes – fruit again, this time cooked in a thin syrup – can also be correctly described as ‘simple’, and are easier by comparison to a fresh fruit salad, but they too have their subtleties. For example, there is a considerable difference between a compote of rhubarb and stewed rhubarb.

Fools, a comforting mix of fruit either fresh or cooked, smashed or puréed and enriched with whipped cream, will also require the cook to concentrate, in an effort to achieve a balance of fruit and cream that favours both the fat and the fruit equally and allows neither element to dominate.

The time of year will determine where your fruit comes from and what recipe you choose to cook. From spring through summer and autumn you can rely on a good supply of home-grown fruit, and also, during those warmer months, of treats that rarely grow well here, such as peaches, nectarines, apricots and so on. During the dark winter months you will need more help from fruit that has been grown in a climate more sunny than ours, apart from what you may have frozen during the productive months here. The trick is to be able to recognise what fruit, local or otherwise, is at its best at any particular time of the year and to use it then.

I tend to gorge on fruits that grow successfully in our climate when they are in season, at their very best and delightfully at their cheapest. I then mostly forget about them until they appear the following year. I feel the same way about the best imported fruit – peaches and nectarines, for example. When the French and Italians are eating their home-grown and sun-ripened stone fruit, I want them then as well. I freeze a few prime locally produced fruits, but only the ones that I know will preserve well. I freeze for quality, not for sentiment, and only freeze fruit that I am confident will produce a delicious result later in the year.

I also indulge in the fruits with a unique flavour and a unique place in the calendar and that have thankfully escaped from being mass-produced due to their reluctance to conform, or travel, or that are not a worthwhile option for industrial-style production. These fruits can only be enjoyed in a certain place at a certain time.

The first dessert apple of the season, the Beauty of Bath, is a good example. Its season is short and it is a bad traveller. As children, our mother would quietly observe us eyeing up the tree bearing the forbidden fruit from about the middle of July. But we knew that the first day of August was the appointed moment for us to feast on the fruit, and generally we behaved accordingly. When finally the day arrived and we were allowed to climb the tree and claim the sweet bounty, our joy was noisy. The best of these apples were the ones eaten in the early morning or late evening, when the fruit was cold as well as sweet. Warnings about eating too many sometimes went unheeded, and we usually got the predicted hives. Cool pink calamine lotion was tenderly administered to our raised blotches. I remember how we would hold the apples up to our mother’s face and say that her cheeks looked just like the skin of the apples. We thought we were paying her the highest possible compliment, because we thought few things could be as lovely as these apples or as lovely as her. She, elegantly as always, graciously accepted our childish plaudits and it was not until years later that I realised that the broken-veined and slightly blushed appearance of the apple may not have seemed quite the compliment we had meant it to be. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. To this day, I always rub the first of these apples against my cheek in a quiet act of remembrance.

In a couple of weeks these fragile apples were gone for another year and we moved on to the next tree that became ripe and ready. More itchy hives and more soothing lotion followed.

Always choose perfectly ripe and seasonal fruit, regardless of whether it is to be cooked or not. Berries such as raspberries, loganberries, tayberries, blackberries and blackcurrants can be frozen at the height of their season and make excellent fools at a later stage of the year when seasonal fruit is just not a great option.

Fruit that is being cooked for a fool should be quite tender to ensure the creamy consistency of the finished dish.

Generally, cream that is being added to fruit to make a fool should be thickly whipped, so that the finished consistency of the dish will be similar to softly whipped cream.

The mixing of the sweetened fruit and cream should be a gentle business, using a flexible rubber spatula. How thoroughly you wish to mix the two is up to you. The less you mix, the streakier and more dramatic the effect will be.

The first tender pink stalks of rhubarb are always a great treat. Expensive and scarce, their appearance heralds the arrival of spring and they never taste better than in the first few weeks of the season. Buy exactly the quantity you need and try not to let any go to waste.

The trick is trying to get the balance of fruit and cream right. Too much cream dilutes the flavour of the fruit and is too rich, and too little cream can leave the fool tasting a bit underwhelming. The consistency of the whipped cream is another crucial element. If the cream is too soft, the fool will be runny and more like a soup. If the cream is too stiffly whipped, the fool can become grainy. So look at your poached fruit and gauge the necessary consistency of the cream accordingly.

Serve crisp, buttery vanilla shortbread biscuits with the fool or, as I am suggesting in this case, an almondy, sugary, caramelised Sacristain.

The first of the new season rhubarb, forced and grown under glass or plastic, with its pinkish red stalks can be eaten raw or cooked. It combines in its raw state with blood oranges to make a delicious and refreshing salad. When buying it, the leaves should be firm and glossy and the stalks firm, well coloured and neither too thick nor too thin (about the thickness of your thumb). Avoid green stalks of rhubarb completely, unless you are making a chutney, in which case a few green stalks will do no harm.

Serves 6–8 450g rhubarb, cut into 2cm pieces

175–225g caster or granulated sugar

2 tablespoons water

300ml regular, double or whipping cream, whipped until quite stiff

Sacristains, 1 or 2 per person

Place the rhubarb, sugar and water in a small stainless steel saucepan and stir to mix. This seems like a very small amount of water, but the rhubarb will release its own juice as it cooks and the less water you use the better the flavour of the fruit will be. Cover with a greaseproof paper lid and a very tight-fitting saucepan lid and bring to a simmer on a low heat. Cook gently until the rhubarb is collapsed and tender, about 20 minutes.

Sit a sieve over a bowl and drop the cooked rhubarb in, allowing the excess syrup to drain into the bowl. Do not press the rhubarb. Allow the fruit and the syrup to cool completely. Place the cooled rhubarb in a bowl and mix gently with some of the strained syrup to break it up. Do not turn it into a purée, as it is nice to come across distinguishable little pieces of the fruit as you eat the fool. Fold in the whipped cream and add a little more of the strained syrup if the consistency is not soft enough. Handle gently and do not over-mix.

This is one of those recipes that somehow is greater than the sum of its parts. Raspberries, sugar and cream, three easy-to-source ingredients, produce a rich and luscious result. When available and in season, I use fresh raspberries. However, this is excellent made with frozen berries and I have not quite decided whether it may not actually be better made with the frozen fruit. Soft fruit becomes tarter when frozen and this seems to accentuate the flavour when the fool is made with the frozen berries. Serve Vanilla Shortbread Biscuits with the fool.

Raspberries, best-quality fresh or frozen, work equally well here. The berries can also be replaced very successfully with tart loganberries or tayberries, or even a mixture of all three.

Serves 8–10 450g raspberries, fresh or frozen

150–225g caster sugar

600ml regular, double or whipping cream, whipped until quite stiff

Vanilla Shortbread Biscuits

Lay the raspberries out flat on a dish. Sprinkle on the caster sugar and allow to macerate for 1 hour. If you are using frozen berries this should be long enough for them to defrost.

Purée the fruit and sugar in a liquidiser or blender. Pass the purée through a sieve to remove the seeds. Discard the seeds. Gently fold in the whipped cream. If you wish to create a ‘swirly’ effect, just be a little light-handed with the folding in of the cream. The fool is now ready to be served with the shortbread biscuits, or can be chilled for serving later.

However, fruit suitable for compotes such as raspberries, loganberries, tayberries and currants, red, white and black, will when frozen in prime condition at the height of their local growing season, yield an excellent compote.

The cooked fruit in a compote should be perfectly tender and still holding its shape.

When serving a compote, it is crucial to serve plenty of the sweetened poaching syrup with the fruit.

Plums that are hard and boring when raw can be transformed into something delicious when poached in a simple syrup. Here the syrup is half water and half red wine, the wine adding a lovely warming depth to the flavour. The star anise, a lovely spice, is perfect with the plums. The cooked plums should be holding their shape perfectly, but still tender enough to fall away from the stone with a gentle push of a fork or spoon. Serve these plums warm or chilled – they are delicious with whipped cream, yoghurt or crème fraîche, or with Yoghurt and Star Anise Cream. Any of the wine and plum syrup left over after eating the plums can be made into a lovely jelly. The syrup also makes an excellent cocktail when diluted with sparkling water and stiffened with a splash of vodka.

Dark red or blood plums are ideal here. Unusually, I don’t mind if they are hard, as they are transformed in the cooking to a state of tender deliciousness.

Star anise is a lovely spice, and its distinctive and quite beautiful star-shaped appearance is as lovely as its heady aroma. A word of caution, though: if you are heavy-handed with it, its forthright flavour and heady scent can move from being sweet and exotic to being more reminiscent of cheap pot-pourri – not good.

Serves 8 900g plums

550g caster or granulated sugar

2–3 star anise

300ml cold water

300ml red wine

Put the plums, sugar, star anise, water and wine into a saucepan and bring slowly to a simmer. Cover the pan and poach the plums at a simmer on a gentle heat until they are just starting to tenderise. This will take about 20 minutes, but keep a good eye on them – different varieties of plum, and plums in different stages of ripeness, will vary in cooking times. The plums should be holding their shape and feeling a little underdone in the middle when you remove them from the heat. They will continue to soften as the syrup cools. Serve warm, at room temperature or chilled.

This is a great recipe that can be used all year round. I use fresh berries in summer and autumn, and frozen ones in winter.

The geranium leaves come from the lemon-scented geranium, and they add a highly scented and delicious flavour to the syrup and the fruit. You will find this geranium in a good garden centre and it is well worth having. It can sit outside in a sunny spot in summer and needs to come back to a sunny windowsill, conservatory or glasshouse for the winter months. It is immensely useful and I also use it to flavour mousses and soufflés, sorbets, granitas and ice creams. It also pairs beautifully with blackberries and apples, or better still a combination of both of those fruits. I have on occasions replaced the geranium with mint, lemon balm or lemon verbena with excellent results.

Ripe fresh or best-quality frozen berries are equally successful here. If using frozen berries, there is no need to defrost them before use.

The water in the ingredients should be cold so that it draws the flavour out of the leaves and into the syrup as it comes up to the boil.

Serves 6 600g raspberries, fresh or frozen

400ml cold water

350g caster or granulated sugar

6–8 sweet geranium leaves

Put the berries into a large heatproof bowl. Put the cold water, sugar and geranium leaves into a saucepan and slowly bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to make sure the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for 2 minutes.

If using frozen berries, pour the boiling syrup straight over them, straining out the leaves as you go. If using fresh berries, allow the syrup to cool for 5 minutes before straining and pouring over the fruit. The fruit can be eaten immediately while still warm, which is lovely during the winter months, or you can leave it for a couple of hours and serve chilled. It keeps for several days in the fridge.

This may seem like an unusual combination, but believe me, it works really well. The cooked rhubarb should be perfectly tender and still holding its shape, in a syrup perfumed with vanilla and citrus juice.

The rhubarb is delicious served with Rhubarb Fool, in which case it should definitely be chilled, or with Vanilla or Brown Bread Ice Cream.

Bright red and firm rhubarb stalks are required here. Watch out for a lovely variety of rhubarb called Timperley Red.

Clementines have the most delicious juice and are best here, though any of the sweet oranges from the mandarin orange family such as satsumas or tangerines will do.

Serves 4 450g red rhubarb stalks, cut at an angle into 5cm pieces

175g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

125ml clementine or tangerine juice

Place all the ingredients in a baking dish they fit into snugly. Cover tightly with tinfoil and seal well. Put into the preheated oven and cook for about 1 hour. I usually have a look at them after 45 minutes, testing the pieces with a skewer to see how tender they are, but generally I find it takes the full hour to cook. Serve warm or chilled.

If your fruit is not perfectly ripe and in perfect condition, you will not produce a beautiful salad. The fruit is being served uncooked, so there is nowhere for hard, flavourless fruit to hide.

Take great care when cutting, peeling and slicing the fruit, so as to ensure a neat and even result that will not only look better but eat better as well.

When sweetening fruit for a salad, don’t overdo it. The sugar is there to enhance the flavour of the fruit, not to overpower it. On the other hand, it is not clever to have the fruit too sharp – remember that eating the fruit is supposed to be a pleasurable experience, not a cheek-caving, lip-puckering ordeal.

When combining several types of fruit in a salad, take care with the proportions so as to have a good, even balance.

When mixing the fruit, use a flexible rubber spatula wielded with care and delicacy so as not to break the fruit and end up with a mush.

Most fruit salads will benefit from an hour of maceration before serving to draw the juices out of the fruit and for the various flavours to mingle. After the hour, the fruit starts to lose its texture and freshness of taste.

When peaches are ripe and delicious at the height of summer, there are few things I prefer more than this simple dish. You can take it a step further by adding a sprinkling of raspberries or, when available, alpine strawberries. I eat this on its own or with peach sorbet, and for a real celebration with a splash of fizzy wine such as Prosecco or Blanc de Blanc, just before it goes to the table. A few really tender spearmint leaves could be gently torn over the salad at the last minute and that too would be lovely.

Wait until you see great peaches before you decide to make this dish, or else plan ahead and have your peaches in stock to guarantee that they will be perfectly ripe. Fully ripe nectarines are great here as well.

Peaches will be at their best in late July, August and early September. Watch out for unblemished fruit. Pick one up and smell it and if it doesn’t transport you to a peach orchard, don’t bother with it. White-fleshed peaches are particularly good, and keep an eye out for the variety of flat peach called Saturna, which is delicious. These flat peaches look as if someone sat on them, but when properly ripe they taste terrific. When perfectly ripe, yellow-fleshed peaches are just about an equal to the lauded white fruit. It is also worth keeping an eye out in good food shops or farmers’ markets, as very occasionally a mild spring followed by a hot summer will yield home-grown peaches, and varieties such as Perrigrin, or the nectarine called Lord Napier, can be outstanding. However, regardless of climactic conditions, your geographical location, or the flesh colour of peach, only the ripe peach will do.

Blueberries have achieved legendary status in the last few years for their health benefits. High in vitamin C, and a beneficial antioxidant, they are now classed as a superfood. If you were to believe all the health benefits associated with them, you might eat nothing else. They certainly taste wonderful, and are being grown in larger quantities in this country with each passing year. As long as they look and smell fresh, they are generally fine. They are well worth freezing, especially for people who like to include them as a regular part of their diet. Buy them at the height of the season in August and freeze them as they are.

Serves 4 4–6 ripe peaches

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1 lemon

150g blueberries

To peel the peaches, cut a small shallow cross in the stem end of the fruit. Place them in a heatproof bowl and pour over boiling water to cover the fruit – the water must be absolutely boiling. Count out 10 seconds and immediately remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and gently submerge them in iced water. After a few seconds, remove them from the chilled water and the skins should slip off easily.

Slice the peach flesh off the stone in 5mm slices into a bowl. Sprinkle them with a little sugar and a few drops of lemon juice as you go. Depending on how sweet the fruit is, you may not need all the sugar, and be mean with the lemon juice, as you don’t want its flavour and sharpness to dominate. The lemon juice is in this dish to prevent the peaches from discolouring and to enhance the flavour of the fruit with its acidity. When all the peaches are sliced, add the blueberries and mix gently with a flexible rubber spatula. Already the sugar will be dissolving to a delicious syrup. Taste, being sure to get a piece of peach and a blueberry on the spoon, and decide if you need to add any remaining sugar. Serve the peaches as soon as all the sugar has dissolved to a rich syrup, or cover and chill for serving later.

If you are adding a few raspberries or alpine strawberries, stir them in very gently, using the rubber spatula so as not to break up the fruit.

Once upon a time, you could eat strawberries straight from the plant and expect a delicious experience. That is not the case now, except for a few exceptional varieties that are grown for the quality of their taste and not, as most commercial strawberries are, for appearance, longevity and hardiness.

This salad is really quick and easy to make and is both refreshing and delicious. Try to find honey produced close to where you live, and unwaxed lemons. Do not chop the mint until you are ready to add it to the fruit, as it will oxidise and lose its fresh sweet flavour if chopped in advance. Serve this salad on its own or with vanilla ice cream, or with a sugar biscuit and softly whipped cream.

Choose the ripest and freshest strawberries you can find. The freshness of the calyx or green stalk of the fruit is the best indicator as to the freshness of the fruit – it should be bright green and looking as fresh as a daisy. Watch out for a variety of strawberry called Gariguette and when you see it, buy it, as it has a flavour and sweetness that has long been bred out of most of the commercial varieties. If you find it you can cut down on the suggested quantity of honey in the recipe.

Spearmint, the smooth and tender-leaved variety, with its aroma of French markets and Moroccan tea, is best here.

Serves 4 450g strawberries

1–2 tablespoons honey

1–2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons mint leaves

Hull the strawberries and slice thickly into a bowl. Mix the honey and lemon juice together. Chop the mint and immediately add to the honey. Taste to check that the balance of honey and lemon is correct. It should be neither too sweet nor too tart.

Add the honey mixture to the fruit and toss gently. Taste again, remembering that it is the sweetness of the strawberries that will really determine if more honey or lemon is needed. Serve immediately, or chill and serve within the hour.

This is a lovely refreshing salad which I like to serve when the new season oranges from Italy and dates from Morocco arrive in the shops in December. I scramble around in the garden trying to find a few surviving mint leaves to freshen it up. If the mint has all been scorched by the frost, I just use a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. This dish can be served on its own with perhaps a little yoghurt.

In the shops here, oranges start to get good in early December, as the Italian ones arrive on the market. These oranges are usually around for a couple of months and are sweet and full of juice, light years away from the hard little scuds we have to put up with for most of the rest of the year. Colour in oranges is not an indication of quality, and avoid rock-hard light ones in favour of firm and heavy-feeling fruit.

Medjool dates, fat, meaty and shiny, arrive in the shops in December, usually the same time as the good oranges, a fortuitous bit of timing. Watch out for another wonderful variety of date called Barhi, which Alice Waters introduced me to at the Berkeley farmers’ market in California.

Orange flower or orange blossom water is a perfumed distillation from the fresh blossoms of Seville oranges and can be found in good food shops and chemists.

Serves 4–6 5 oranges

1 tablespoon caster sugar or 1 dessertspoon honey

12 dates

2 tablespoons orange flower water

1 tablespoon mint leaves

2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds (optional)

Remove the zest from one of the oranges with a fine grater or a Microplane. Juice the zested orange and put into a bowl with the zest. With a sharp knife, remove the skin and pith from the remaining oranges. Slice or segment the oranges and add to the juice and zest with the caster sugar or honey.

Halve the dates lengthways, remove the stones and add to the oranges. Sprinkle on the orange flower water. Chop the mint leaves and gently mix all the ingredients together, being careful not to break up the orange pieces. If using the pomegranate seeds, add now. Cover and chill before serving.

This salad can be made all year round, varying the fruit according to availability and the season. Take particular care when choosing the fruit. If underripe fruit is chosen the results will be disappointing, so don’t hesitate to leave one of the suggested fruit out if it is not up to scratch.

The lime syrup will keep in the fridge for several days and also makes an excellent base for lemonade. You can omit the lime syrup if you like, and just sprinkle the prepared fruit as you go with the sugar, lime zest and juice. You will have less juice in the finished salad, but the flavour will be delicious and intense.

Limes will vary a bit in colour, ranging from dark green to pale green depending on where they come from, but they should all have a lustrous quality and feel heavy in proportion to their size.

Pineapples can play games with you when you are trying to choose one that is ripe and ready. The colour of the skin is not an accurate guide to ripeness, as green pineapples can be just lovely, but the green leaves give a much more correct suggestion as to what is going on underneath the heavy skin. If the leaves look tired and discoloured, you can be pretty sure that the flesh inside will have similar defects. Avoid fruit that looks in any way bruised or damaged and particularly avoid any fruit with mould on the skin or leaves, as the flesh will also taste mouldy. Once you are happy with the visuals of the fruit, smell it and trust your nose. The fruit should be sweet-smelling and of course it should smell of pineapple.

Melon is another fruit that should look unblemished before you even pick it up, and will also give you a lot of information by its aroma. If it smells of melon and yields slightly when pressed at the end where the flower was, then all should be well providing you can give it a couple of days to arrive at peak condition in your kitchen. Watch out for green-fleshed Ogen melons – these mostly come from Israel and we see them during the autumn. Orange-fleshed Charentais and Cavaillon, confusingly the same variety and from France, and lovely Cantaloupe from Italy, are all summer melons.

Mangoes, like many imported fruits, are picked under-ripe to make them easier to transport. Generally, you need to allow a few days for them to ripen at room temperature. To test if they are ripe, press with the heel of your thumb, it should yield slightly. Watch out for the yellow skinned Alphonso mangoes, arriving in the shops towards the end of April, they are some of the best of the year.

Passion fruit with their ugly, dimpled and wrinkly skins, give no indication on the outside as to the deliciousness that lies within. When buying, avoid the smooth skinned ones, as they will not be properly ripe, but do make sure there is no mould on the skin, as in that case the flavour of the flesh may be tainted.

Kiwi fruit, a fruit that has somewhat gone out of fashion, can be excellent. Its lack of popularity may be due to the Nouvelle Cuisine movement in Europe in the late 70s and 80s when it ended up in all sorts of inappropriate places at the hands of some misguided chefs. If you have forgotten about them, perhaps this might be the time to reacquaint yourself with this hairy little fellow. Stunningly beautiful when out of their skin and closely observed, they are sweet and flavoursome when perfectly ripe. A ripe kiwi will yield slightly to pressure when pressed and should have an unblemished and unbroken skin. Overripe and soft kiwis will ruin a dish. Watch out for the golden kiwi, a relatively recent arrival here.

Serves 10 LIME SYRUP

225g sugar

225ml water

2 limes

FRUIT

1 pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into neat 3cm chunks

1 melon, halved, seeds removed, cut into 3cm chunks or into balls with the aid of a melon baller

2–4 kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced

1 mango, peeled and sliced

2–4 passion fruit, halved and sieved if you don’t like the seeds

Seeds of ½–1 pomegranate

2 bananas, peeled and sliced

Put the sugar and water into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally. Simmer for 1 minute, then take off the heat and allow to cool completely. Remove the zest from the limes with a fine grater or Microplane, and add with the juice to the cooled syrup. Prepare your fruit as suggested in the ingredient list and add to the syrup. Do not add the bananas until just before serving. Serve chilled.