Just the other day I was complaining about how difficult it is to get hold of gooseberries in North London, and how much I love them, when a good friend of mine took my complaints to heart and gave me a punnet of gorgeous gooseberries as a present / to shut me up. Well she is now the patron saint of gooseberries in my house, and long and fruitful may her beatification be! This recipe is based on a timely Hugh Fearnley-Stanley-Wittingstall one from
The Guardian, but I've made it into an oaty crumble, just because I love crumble almost as much as I love gooseberries.
Ingredients
- 1 punnet (about 200g) of gooseberries
- 1 punnet (about 200g) of strawberries
- 75g of caster sugar
- The zest of 1 lemon
- 75g of plain flour (or you could use almond flour for extra sumptuousness - I will next time)
- 75g of oats (I used rolled oats - I'm not sure if that's important)
- 75g of unsalted butter
- 75g of brown sugar
- A handful of pecan nuts
- Butter for greasing
- Creme fraiche, to serve
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Cut the stalks off the gooseberries and strawberries, cut the strawberries into halves, and mix the fruit in a bowl with the lemon zest and caster sugar. Leave to rest while you get on with everything else (Hugh calls this 'mascerating').
- Use the extra butter to grease a pie dish that will fit all the fruit in it. Or use a non-stick dish instead.
- Cut the 75g of butter into cubes and put it into a bowl with the flour and oats. Rub it all together with your hands until you have sort of breadcrumby little lumpettes.
- Stir the brown sugar into the oaty mixture and you get crumble.
- Break the pecans into bits and stir those into the crumble too.
- Put the 'mascerated' fruit into the dish and spread the crumble on top.
- Bake for 30 minutes. You'll know it's done because it will smell like heaven and be starting to brown on top.
- Serve with the creme fraiche and thankful prayers to St. Helen of the Cross.
P.S. My crumble filling turned out to be fairly liquid, which (as a critic observed) was probably because Hugh's recipe was for an open flan, in which the extra liquid would probably evaporate. Also I used more strawberries than I should have. But the liquid in question tasted like some kind of Olympian ambrosia, so it wasn't altogether unwelcome.
