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A bit fruity

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By Helen Lee Gray

We don't have much luck with our fruit harvest. Our trees have leaf curl are strawberries are eaten by the blackbirds, we've had one raspberry from the bush Lord has knocked down 100 times and the blackcurrants have given us just a handful of berries. So, with a poor crop of any single fruit and a bowl full of plums which only seem to get harder not riper, I decided to cut our losses and harvest the fruit to make squash.

Simple recipe: I used plums, white currents, black currents and strawberries but any soft fruits would do.



Wash your fruit, don't peel it, don't de stalk it, do deseed/stone it

Dump all the fruit (between 1lbs and 1.5lbs) into a saucepan

Put a few springs of lemon verbena or mint

Cover with water (about 5 pints)

Boil until the fruit is mushy (it smells fantastic)

Mush fruit a bit more with the back of a spoon

Pass fruit through a colander into another saucepan

Pass fruit back through a fine sieve into the first saucepan

Put the fruit back on the heat and add 1lb of caster sugar

Don't stir for 5 mins
Once the liquid is bubbling away stir until the sugar disappears and you've got a silky liquid which lightly coats the back of a spoon

Let it cool

Bottle it by passing the liquid through a muslin cloth to remove any sediment

It'll last about 2 weeks in the fridge

Mix with water for squash, mix with vodka for a treat!




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