Local strawberries are now in the shops and are well worth the wait

They may look like a strawberry but they don’t taste or smell anything like a variety you’d get here in summer. There’s nothing to beat that fragrance and the juicy sweetness when you bite into one. Drizzle with a toot of cream and you have a perfectly simple yet sublime dessert. Here I’ve converted them into an icecream. You don’t need any specialist equipment here apart from an electric whisk. Whisk up egg yolks and sugar over a pan of simmering water until pale and fold in a strawberry puree and some cream. It will set perfectly in the freezer. You could serve with more berries or make some of the lemon biscuits here and construct yourself a very fancy slider.

The best things in life are free and the countryside is ripe for the pillaging at the moment. Hedgerows gleam with the creamy, lacy flowers of the Elder. Seamus Heaney in his poem “Glanmore Sonnets” refers to the elder as the boortree bush - “ It was our bower as children, a greenish, dank and snapping memory as I get older. I love its blooms like saucers brimmed with meal”. To capture the blossom the best way is to make a cordial. I’ve included the recipe here but a word of caution, keep it in the fridge after opening. I didn’t do this a few years ago and the cordial fermented, blew off its cork and the door to the drinks cabinet in the process….

Today is World Gin day and serendipitously I’ve brought out my own gin in collaboration with Basalt’s Giants Rock gin based outside Bushmills.

It’s distilled with gorse (or whin to give it its proper name), meadowsweet, elderflower and lemon verbena. It’ll be available in the shops soon.

At the Balmoral Show this year I did a demonstration using the gin to serve with local charcuterie. In Holland they make gin mayonnaise and the spicy fragrant of the spirit works well in the sauce.

Elderflower and gin go very well with cucumber and I’ve added a recipe for cucumber pickled with the flower and the spirit. You could also serve the mayonnaise and the gin with grilled mackerel, pollan from Lough Neagh, or some poached salmon.

At last count there were 14gin distilleries in Northern Ireland each uniquely of the place they’re from.

Despite it being a young industry here many of the distilleries have picked up awards globally and are well worth sussing out.

Pour yourself a nice local g and t, pop a strawberry in the glass and be thankful for the abundance of produce we have around us.