Gooseberries

Gooseberries are a bit like ladies in comfortable shoes, not particularly trendy and with too much body hair. But just as everything enjoys a revival, including shoulder pads and stone-washed jeans, this berry has been causing a mild stir this summer. Seasonal chef Valentine Warner turned them into a classic fool in his book What to Eat Now. More Please and gooseberry pie is the stuff of many a modern British menu.

It's hard to find these hirsute fruits (I bought them from new food ordering website Food4London.co.uk that brings together growers and producers from just the south east), and the season is so short that you can't help getting a little excited by their tempting tartness.

With just one small punnet, I was several gooseberries short of a pie, and with a hot August sun beating through my kitchen window, my thoughts turned to sorbet. I love a good ice, particularly a sharp, palate-cleansing one. Raspberry sorbet is a personal favourite and so easy to make - just pureed fruit, lemon juice, sugar and water. I've applied this same simple formula to gooseberries, adding some elderflower cordial to give a softer, sweeter floral note, and the result is fresh and delicious - a modern take on a stalwart English fruit. Enjoy.

Gooseberry and elderflower sorbet

Serves 6 (in shot glasses)

200g gooseberries

1 tbsp elderflower cordial

Splash water

90g caster sugar

70 ml water

Juice of ½ lemon

Put the gooseberries and elderflower cordial into a saucepan. Add a splash of water and poach the fruit on a gentle heat until soft and pulpy.

Push the gooseberries and juice through a fine sieve. Set aside to cool.

Into another pan, put the sugar and water then slowly bring up to the boil. Allow to bubble for 2 mins until syrupy. Take off the heat and allow to cool.

Mix the fruit and the cooled sugar syrup together with the lemon juice. Pour into a plastic tub then put into the freezer (or pour into an ice-cream maker). Stir with a metal spoon every hour for 3-4 hours to break up the ice crystals.

Serve in shot glasses with a spring of mint.

Sugar part 1

I hate wasting food. I know we're all meant to say that these days (it'd be a brave foodie who admits to lobbing out perfectly usable ingredients) but it feels like a dyed-in-the-wool quality of mine. It's been commented on that I'd have been good in the War, the sort of gal who could rustle up a nourishing meal from a scrag end and rotten potato. Fortunately, it's never been put to the test and I have the total luxury of buying whatever food I fancy.

But this posting is n't about scratch cooking, (let's save that for the middle of January) but using up every bit of an ingredient. Namely vanilla pods. Once you've split them and extracted all the supremely exotic seeds, you're left with a scented wand that will generously impart its flavour to sauces or sugar. So to the sugar, at last. This is my ingredient of the week because it's the backbone of so much cooking and can so easily be made more special.

In the full spirit of waste not, want not, I've made a trio of flavoured sugars using up ingredients from my store cupboard. First up, the vanilla. Leave the pod to dry out, then break into small pieces and push into a jar of sugar. Second, is lavender. With none growing in my garden, I used up a pack of dried flower heads bought from Norfolk Lavender during a Martha Stewart moment when lavender bags seemed like a reasonable home-made gift. Even in a credit crunch, that seems quite dull. And lastly, rose and cardamom. It's a flavour combination that works in ice cream but it could be over-egging the pudding (I have a tendency to do that). I mixed the sugar with some rose buds that I bought in Marrakech and lightly bashed the cardamom pods to release their aroma.

These jars will now sit and silently infuse for a month and then it'll be fragrant sugar experimentation time (look out for Sugar Part 2). And it's not camera trickerey - these kilner jars really are petits. I'm fast running out of cupboard space and flavoured sugars aren't top priority. They look cute though, perhaps a gift idea (Martha, here we go again).

Just a note about sugar - I've used unrefined caster sugar because it seems odd to me to bleach food. No need. Just like haddock dyed yellow - what is that all about? Apparently, it was orignally dyed to hide impurities and now it's become shopping habit. Supermarkets say that customers still ask for yellow fish so they still stock yellow fish, but the punters aren't always right. Keep your sugar clean and your cooking will taste the better for it.