Topping and tailing

This is about gooseberries: stick with me.

There’s a very great story about Nick Lowe coming into an unexpected million that changed his life, as well it might. He wrote I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass which was one of the many new wave Costelloesque singles that filled my greedy ears at the time. As the story goes, his song What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding was due to be in the film The Bodyguard, but didn’t make the cut. The sort of thing that can make or break a career. A while later, when not particularly flush, a cheque landed on the mat for a little over a million quid: the song hadn’t made the film but it had made the soundtrack, released before the film came out, and it sold over 17 million copies. Nice.

I don’t get along with much of his stuff, but I like that new wave patch and his beautifully crafted countryish songs about the lonely side of life, like this.

He was once married to Carlene Carter, daughter of June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash’s step daughter. Around the time of I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass, he wrote a song that he reluctantly played to Cash while suffering from a monumental hangover. It wasn’t a success. A dozen years later, he finished it, gave it to Johnny Cash, and here it is.

Along with Hurt, it’s hard to believe Cash didn’t write it himself, it’s so perfect for him.

There have been kilos of gooseberries and their crossed-with-a-blackcurrant cousins jostaberries this year. This makes me happy. Topping and tailing gooseberries and jostaberries does not, unless I’m in that rare but occasional mood where ironing seems meditative rather than tedious.

Two nights ago, I topped and tailed (using thumb nails sharper than Rosa Klebb’s shoes) 300g of them. I can inform you that the ratio of grams to minutes spent topping and tailing is approximately 15:1. This handy index is all I can retrieve from an evening ill-spent.

I had an idea and, as with all of us, some are better than others. This is up there with that time I dressed up as Boy George and drank many pints of black velvet thinking it was just Guinness and thought I should take on the long spiralling banister at that rather large country house.

I wanted to make something savoury with gooseberries, something different to the usual sauce for mackerel etc. I nosed around on the internet and kept coming up with recipes for gooseberry dal and other spicinesses. I researched some more – most were made with the Indian gooseberry which apparently is similar in looks and taste to our own, although grows on a tree rather than a bush. Here, look.

I made the dal. It was rank. I tried all kinds of rescue remedies: it was unsalvagably rank. We don’t hear enough of the monumental cock ups, the awful combinations, the unpleasant pairings from food writers. I think we should. It’d be a gastronomic It’ll Be Alright On The Night. Unless, of course, I’m the only one crap enough to have godawful cockups.

I tweeted it, to which @lickedspoon observed that it was more of a cry for help than a recipe…I responded (awful shoehorning link alert) that ‘I made a dal today, to see if I still feel‘. Not quite worthy of Cash’s fine tones. You should, though, be grateful to me – I made it so that you don’t have to.

It could be, of course, that gooseberry dal may turn out to be my ‘What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding’…that Nigella will happen upon this blog, take the idea and include it in her ‘Best Ever Recipes from Genius Cooks’ book and turn the recipe into a global sensation. You never know*.

The dal has, I’m pleased to say, been my single gooseberry failure in the kitchen. Sorbet, jam, meringue pie, summer pudding, salsa, curd and sauce have all tripped off the surfaces this summer like Fred Astaire. OK, the first attempt at the jam was a little Fred Trueman – robust but a little too much acid, but a few tweaks and it came out all Uma Thurman.

Talking of sauce, here is proof that I am not a complete duffer. Gooseberry sauce…quite like brown sauce but not quite either. It is a special sauce, perfect with sausages – especially cold sausages. And as we all know, the only thing better than a sausage is a cold sausage.

Gooseberry sauce
500g gooseberries, top and tailed
120ml white wine vinegar
600g light brown sugar
2 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger

Put all the ingredients into a large pan, bring slowly to the boil and simmer very gently, uncovered, for an hour or so, stirring once in a while. Zap in the blender until smooth. It should be thickish but still just-about of pouring consistency – simmer a little longer if it’s too thin. Pour into sterilised jars immediately and seal once cool. Refrigerate after opening.

 

* You do.