Coorie Corner
A recipe, a word, and a small thought for the season Gooseberry and Elderflower Fool
To cook: gooseberry and elderflower fool
High summer in a Borders garden means gooseberries, which nobody quite knows what to do with, and elderflower, which is everywhere along the burn in June and worth picking and freezing for later. Together they make the easiest and most old-fashioned of puddings.
Top and tail a pound of gooseberries and cook them gently with three or four tablespoons of sugar and a good splash of elderflower cordial until they collapse — about ten minutes. Crush them roughly and let them cool completely. Whip half a pint of double cream to soft peaks, then fold in the cooled fruit so it streaks through rather than blends, and a spoonful more cordial to taste. Spoon into glasses and chill. That is all. Serve with a shortbread finger if you’re feeling industrious, or on its own if you’re not. It tastes of the hedgerow and the start of the school holidays.
A word: dover (or dover-ower)
A Scots word for a light doze, the kind you fall into in a chair in the afternoon without meaning to. “He was doverin’ by the fire.” There is no exact English equivalent — “doze” is close but lacks the gentleness, the involuntary sweetness of a dover. It is the precise word for what happens to a person after a hill walk and a good lunch, in a quiet cottage, with the window open and the burn going by outside. We recommend it.
A small thought
Summer asks to be filled — with events, with daylight, with the sense that one ought to be making the most of it. But the valley teaches a different lesson. The long evenings are not a thing to be used. They are a thing to be sat in. The best hours of a Borders summer are the empty ones: the dover by the fire, the slow walk back from dinner under a sky that never quite goes dark, the morning when you decide to do nothing at all. Make the most of the summer, by all means. But remember that sometimes the most is the least.