Pink Gooseberry Fool

I love gooseberries which is why we have four bushes down t’allotment; one green for cooking and three red dessert varieties. For the first couple of years we didn’t seem to be getting much fruit from them until we realised the pigeons were beating us to the goodies. So I started going down early in the season and covering the fruit bed with netting; which has paid off since they have given us bumper crops ever since. This year was no exception, the only difference being that due to the atrocious weather we were rather late harvesting them so the red berries were a deep ruby red and tasted oh so sweet. We concluded that we’ve been picking them way too early up until now. I started on the dessert varieties managing to pick 3kg and that’s not counting the ones that fell to the ground. I had just moved on to the green gooseberries when I had to abandon my efforts when Paul managed to stand in a wasps’ nest resulting in us both being stung several times as we ran; Benny Hill style; for the polytunnel, striping off as we went. Even through the pain and discomfort we could see the funny side as we stood there in our underwear. So these gooseberries are extra special, not only did I have to endure the scratches from the thorns on the bush, the nettle stings form the weeds in the fruit bed but the wrath of a billion angry wasps as well!

Most recipes for gooseberry fool are identical and start with cooking the gooseberries with sugar first; which, had they been the green variety most commonly used, I would have done; but as the red ones are sweet enough to eat straight from the bush I didn’t think they would need the extra sweetness so I just bunged them in the blender and gave them a whizz. And it worked, the resulting purée was sweet with a hint of that gooseberry tartness. I decided to adapt Mary Berry’s recipe which uses a mix of cream and Greek yogurt to make it less sickly. The resulting gooseberry fool was absolutely dreamy so go ahead and try it for yourself.