Oh My! I love it when food does that to you. Sneaks up on you and does something unexpected. Like a new dress that looks deceptively simple on the hanger, but once donned, reveals the hand of a master in its exquisite cut and the way it brings out all your best features, flatters you and makes you feel truly, deeply beautiful.

I never expected it of my pretty, earthy blackberry. I thought I knew all its secrets. I know it can be a little tart on first acquaintance, and I know it can be warm and giving when paired up with the softening influence of apples, butter and sugar. I know it can be refreshingly sharp as an ice, with a flimsy summer wrap of Italian grappa. But when, on a whim, I added a new flavour to the mix I didn’t expect this siren of sophisticated sensuality. I’m talking Haute Couture here. Yes, I really mean it. Hold on, let me just have another little taste. Mmmm…no, I’m not mistaken. Definitely supermodel status. Not skinny waif supermodel either, more like Isabella Rossellini, darkly beautiful on the surface, with richly alluring hidden depths.

As always when painting a picture, with words or food, I can’t resist the urge to smudge and blend, add a little colour here for extra depth, a little contrast there, just to highlight. It’s a way of expressing myself and my joy in the endless creative opportunities that constantly litter my path. Put me in an artist’s studio or a kitchen full of food and my instinct is the same. I can’t wait to get my hands dirty and am only truly happy when up to my elbows in colour & texture, fiddling happily with the tools of the trade, surrounded by beauty and possibilities.

This urge is what led me to the happy circumstance I now find myself in. A chance reference in a book to the flavour pairing of blackberries and honey, and I was off, smudging and blending, whipping up a sugar syrup, fixing it with a decadent honey liqueur from my homeland, stirring it into a blackberry and lemon puree. Tasting, hmm…okay, and popping it into the freezer. And then, sadly forgetting about it.

It slipped my mind entirely and I now realise I neglected to rebeat the sorbet to break up the ice crystals. Great, it’ll be more like a granita now, and hard and disappointing work to eat. Well, I’m not going to waste it, but I have Strawberry ice cream in there, and Raspberry and Lime, so the Blackberry & Honey will probably only be eaten when there is nothing else. Except I’ve already taken out the wrong tub, the deep purple velvet of the blackberries is staring reproachfully up at me, I may as well have a quick taste to see if it is at all salvagable. I choose the tiniest of spoons, a little deco coffee spoon passed down from my mother, scrape off the merest sliver and pop it into my mouth.

Oh my! I too believe in long, slow, hot, wet kisses that last 3 days. I have another, bigger scoop. In the words of Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham, I’ll say it again: Oh, my! Now there’s a woman who knows how to express herself…

Recipe Journal

Blackberry and Honey Liqueur Sorbet

• 600 g blackberries (I picked these from the kitchen garden)
• 400 caster sugar
• 200ml water
• 1 small lemon
• 50 ml Honey liqueur (I used Wild Nectar – a liqueur made in Swellendam from Cape fynbos honey. I imagine you could use mead or what the Slovakians call med, although I’m not sure it has the same complexity of character)

Blitz the blackberries in a blender and strain to remove any pips.
Add the lemon juice.
Heat the sugar and water on a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
Continue to cook without stirring until the mix has reduced to a thick but colourless syrup.
Remove from the heat and ’set’ with the honey liqueur.
Allow to cool before stirring into the puree. Then chill and freeze.
The alcohol improves the texture of this sorbet, and I did not rebeat it, but you may do so after about an hour if you wish.

Serve in little sherry or tot glasses with coffee spoons, after the cheese course or before a rich chocolate tart. Oh never mind! Forget the formality, we’ve gone way beyond that haven’t we? Serve by itself whenever you like, this lush beauty needs no-one to hold its hand. But perhaps an elegant cup of dark espresso waiting in the wings…

This recipe is my entry to the GYO event on Andrea’s Recipes

4 Comments »

Trackback URI | Comments RSS