Light, tangy and as simple as any diaphanous cloud of nonsense you will find here.

What are you doing in there, said the, ever grumbling, wildlife warrior (gardener). He exuded a disturbingly soft, yet gleeful, whimper whilst attempting to pick the little wooly gooseberries from their thorny branches. Then snip, snip, snip he placed the offending branches gently into the trug. For many of us there’s a secondhand familiarity with gooseberries, they bring an inherent joy of simple summer days, grandparents, an aide memoire of ‘back in the day’ flavour.

 

 

 

He ate one just as I happened to turn up with yet another mug of coffee (milk with 3 sugars). The ultimate gurning frown face. “Dunno why I did that I can’t stand the (blanc) things”.  Anyway I found this lot growing in this ‘ere rose bed best get’m gone .

 

 

 

The ole softie handed them over. “Fair exchange is no robbery” quoth he.

Hence I too picked up the mantle of talking to gooseberries, maybe in slightly less officious / pirate voice, than the king of roses.

One asset stripped the branches, and topped and tailed the fruits.

 

 

 

Gifting them a shiggle in a cold water shower, then a coating of golden caster and a drop of water a gooseberry compote was the immediate plan of action, so into a pan over a low heat to the not quite falling apart stage and then withdrew them from the heat and left them to cool.

“So what are we going to do with you”? 

A couple of glugs of elderflower cordial turned out to be step 2 or is it 3? Ahhh the heady fragrance of the gooseberries as they warmly embrace the sultry elderflower is divine.  

Righty oh landlubbers, that’s quite enough of that old malarky, it was just to offset his pirate-technics.

 

 

 

 

Equal parts of light creme fraiche and the sumptuous syrup and just a few ‘bits’ were poured into the denture pink moulds. Could I find the lolly sticks – nope! Kebab skewers modified with kitchen scissors – yep!

 

 

 

 

Goosegogs work well with both sweet and savoury dishes and make a perfect palette cleanser and in this instance, add an edgy, tang to lovely, light weight, frozen creme fraiche, dare I suggest, sophisticated ice lollies  (yes Madam, indeed, popsicles to you).

 

 

 

Just combining the emollient light creme fraiche with the what-not-compote was all it took, utterly, utterly delish.

Effort? Calories? Err all fairly minimal.

So now we can all be part of the excessively-virtuous goody-two-shoes brigade … well ish since I’ve frozen the pulp to make Gooseberry Crumbles in the Autumn.

…. now the plan now is to hunt for more gooseberries and repeat using a glug or two of St. Germain ( Elderflower liqueur). It may not make the trophy popsicle vibe but I think a decent sorbet-esque scenario could be on the cards?

Heave ho m’hearties, heave ho.

 

Toot toot x

 

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