Berry nice

Sue Lawrence provides some recipes using that quintessential summer fruit, the raspberry

Most people, on tasting their first raspberry of the season think of hot sun and summertime.

My thoughts, however, are not of melba sauce or luscious raspberry jam, but of luggies and dreels and sore tummies. For, as a child, I was one of that happy band of berrypickers who were paid a paltry sum of money to pick berries all day long in sun, wind and rain, for the whole month of July.

In Tayside and Perthshire, summer holidays and berries were inextricably linked. Hordes of schoolchildren would walk, cycle or catch a bus to ‘go to the berries.' It was a way of life and the irritating scratches on our legs and berry-stained shirts and shorts were part and parcel.

Having left the comfort of my Auntie Bette's home in Invergowrie just outside Dundee, I would walk to the fruit farm with my cousins early in the morning. The first thing to do was to collect our buckets (called luggies) and tie them round our waists with string. Then we would be dispatched to the fields of raspberries, which were the best berries to pick as your back didn't ache as it did with strawberries. You were also sheltered from the worst of the weather by the high leafy canes. And because of the length of the rows (called dreels) you could also have a good old chat all day long with your fellow pickers.

The trouble with raspberries was that they tasted so good, most of the ones I picked never made it into my luggie. My smile must have been rather unsightly, with little seeds sticking between my teeth. R...

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• By : Sue Lawrence
• In : Food
• Issue : 33
• Page : 49
• Words : 971