I do not have a gooseberry bush in my garden, but yes I admit to a couple of blueberry bushes, a whole forest of raspberry canes and some extremely productive strawberry plants. So I bought a punnet of gooseberries with a definite purpose in mind. Before getting on with that purpose, my young 10 year-old daughter had a couple of friends over to play; a lovely hot afternoon playing with water and supposedly being in the care of her father-who had his head stuck under the bonnet of the car, car manual at his side. I went out - what could go wrong?!? I had given him strict instructions that he must keep checking on the girls, in fact perhaps it would be a good idea to leave the car job and take a break. On my return I was warned not to go into the kitchen by a very, very harassed and agitated husband! so as I walked into the back garden with extreme trepidation and foreboding I was met with the sight of the three little girls smeared with mud, making mud pies using the soil from the mole hills in the garden-as well as flushing the mole runs with water carried from the kitchen - sorry to any animal rights readers - and in one of the many kitchen bowls taken from my cupboards was the most interesting gooseberry mud pie of all! Now I am all for trying out new tastes and recipes - but this is one I definitely would not recommend!
However I WOULD recommend this one-an experiment that really worked well...Gooseberry and Elderflower Ice cream....500ml double cream, 4 egg yolks-Olivia is a dab hand at separating yolks and whites, 3 tbsps. of sugar, swig of elderflower cordial, sieved puree of stewed gooseberries left from a punnet that has been plundered for mud pies...it's helpful if you have an ice-cream maker (mine is from Lakeland and their own basic model). Whisk yolks and sugar add cream, stir in flavours, bung into ice-cream maker and let it do the rest.......the result is sublime!
From this........ |
To this........Gooseberry and Elderflower Ice-cream |