Miles Collins

A classic English Summer dessert

The English summer is rarely something to write about, it’s not all bad but it’s not all good either. When it’s good it’s glorious but when it’s bad…
What the summer does produce though is some spectacular soft fruits, amongst the finest in the world. Raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, blackberries, gooseberries, red and white currants flourish in the English soil and for the chef it is a matter of duty to put them on the highest pedestal.

Summer pudding is a legend amongst desserts in England, it symbolises all that was good about yesteryear, simple food with great ingredients. Leftover bread with freshly picked fruits and a blob of cream, that’s it. Traditionally the pudding is made in a pudding bowl, left to set before being turned out and sliced. This involves cutting the bread into the right sized pieces to avoid any leaks and the danger is that you make more than you really want or need.What I do is take the basic premise of a summer pudding and adapt it to the needs of a restaurant. The fact is that the traditional pudding doesn’t present as well as a customer in a restaurant might expect and as a chef I have to take that into consideration.

You can use bog standard white or brown bread with the crusts removed but I like to use brioche because it’s buttery and rich and far more interesting. We make a sauce of cooked raspberries which have been sweetned and pureed and then passed through a fine sieve but you can easily use a good quality shop bought coulis or sauce. Take a round cutter, the size of which depends upon your appetite and cut out three disks of bread. Now soak them in the sauce until the bread has thoroughly absorbed the colour and flavour. Set aside.

Take a good mixture of fresh fruits, taste a couple for sweetness. Dust them with sugar if you think they need it but above all they should be ripe. Take a little of the fruit sauce and fold the fruits through it with a spoon. Now take the cutter and put a disk of soaked bread in the bottom. Place a selection of fruit on top and then place another disk on top of that. Repeat with the fruit followed by a final layer of the bread. Ideally you will reserve your best fruits for the top for maximum effect. Press down gently and leave to rest in the fridge whilst you whip your cream or prepare your ice cream/clotted cream.

Gently remove the cutter and serve in a bowl with your cream of choice. Enjoy a piece of England!

Summer Pudding with Lemon Curd Ice Cream