Summer should be all about eating as much vibrant fruit as possible. Here in the UK we are blessed with a beautiful bounty of berries – cherries, strawberries, blackberries and more. Picnics, barbecues and al-fresco dining can all be brought to a beautiful end with a simple fruit salad. And while you can eat berries as they are, it’s also nice to do something a little special when the time comes.
In my restaurant days we would extract the flavour of strawberries by microwaving them with sugar before making a jelly or gel out of the liquid – nice, but too fancy for this. Instead, I thought it would be delicious to draw out the fragrance of a strawberry, utilising the discarded tops by roasting them gently. Using the liquid as the fruit salad dressing means you get even more flavour; of course, you can switch up the berries with whatever you may have to hand.
Serves 6
raspberries 165g
blackberries 100g, cut in half
blueberries 90g
strawberries 270g, hulled and cut in half (reserve the leafy tops)
strawberries 250g, cut in half but not hulled
caster sugar 1½ tbsp
water 3 tbsp
mint a few sprigs
orange ½ large, zested
ginger nuts 4
Wash all of the berries and lay them to dry. Preheat the oven to 130C fan/gas mark 2.
Place the reserved tops of the hulled strawberries with the 250g of un-hulled strawberries in a baking dish and stir through the caster sugar and water.
Roast for 10 minutes, then let them cool before pushing the fruit through a sieve. Reserve the juice.
Place all the other berries in a serving bowl, dress with the roasted strawberry juice and stir through the mint leaves.
Scatter the orange zest over the fruit and crush the ginger nuts on top.
Serve immediately. This is lovely with whipped cream.
Baking for Pleasure by Ravneet Gill (HarperCollins, £26) is out now
