The secret of organic soft fruit – especially raspberries – is to pop it in your mouth and enjoy in total ignorance of the fundamental realities of nature.
Free from pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and all other man-made noxious chemical concoctions, plants grown in a natural way have symbiotic relationships with the soil and creatures winged or not.
This you will soon discover if, on gently pulling a ripe raspberry from the stem you tarry and peep into the receptacle cavity of the fruit. For every once in a while you will not only be cradling a delicate pod of delicious flavour – you will be holding a wriggler 😦 A tiny grub deposited by a little fly or wasp – note I did not use the word maggot because you need to keep reading….).
Like a Hitchcock horror film, once seen it is impossible to erase the vision.
If you too are squeamish you may find the thought of consuming a living creature hard to swallow. Like eating an oyster live from its shell and allowing it to meet its maker within your tummy in a soup of acid gastric juices.
Modern moral dilemma. It would be a sin to discard a bounty of natural wholesome goodness but who has the time to individually check each raspberry for wrigglers and then, if present, how do you remove such a delicate creature without harming it in the process and then where do you put it so it survives in a garden full of predators?
In ‘Time Poverty’ the only answer was to rinse the fruit of any Chinook dust and open freeze the morsels of fruity deliciousness. Yes, the poor little wrigglers will inevitably and quite quickly move to a higher place but this is natural selection and it’s a tough world out there.
1 year later……the next season’s raspberries are ready for picking but there is no room in the freezer because of abject prevarication and the fact that frozen raspberries are generally mushy and unpleasant to eat.
The older generation will tell you that quietly a food revolution has taken place as multinationals have acquired nationals who in turn acquired local producers. Now in most supermarkets the majority of offerings change rarely, the foods can be high in sugar and for the most part bland and in the case of squash drinks full of artificial sweeteners.
Cordial – the perfect answer to the Raspberry Mountain*. Mobile phone at the ready, search cordial recipe. Amalgamate the results including one from Auntie Beeb and away we go with some culinary creative problem solving.
Recipe – or Receipt
Large quantity of raspberry’s into the pan.
Large quantity of sugar – well that’s what the recipes indicated
Large quantity of fresh cold water.
How simple. Just bring to the boil for an indeterminate period of time. Best to stir from time to time to stop the sugar from burning the bottom of the pan – not great for ‘Time Poverty Person’.
Once the indeterminate time was over, the acid test, what does it taste like. Great! if you like glucose syrup. Far, far, far too much sugar.
Cottage Industry time. Investing so much time already, this concoction is going to work.
Rhubarb is the answer. Rhubarb and a touch of lime.
Sticks of rhubarb** are washed, chopped and added to the cordial. Heat – taste – consider – ponder – yes – Yummy. The tartness of the rhubarb has countered the sweetness and we have rather a delicious result.
This is not orange juice and we do not want juicy bits – especially since they may include corpses of the wrigglers we murdered.
Very carefully sieve the cooled liquid into a jug. Funnel the juice into sterilised Kilner bottles
…..BE CAREFUL!
if the juice spills it will stain your kitchen worktops which will end up looking like the scene of a raspberry blood bath!
Serve the cordial over ice with sparkling spring water and a slice of lime.
Drink in the garden in the warm summer sunshine whilst watching the bees, wasps and tiny flying creatures buzzing around the raspberry canes.
Claudia Bow 