Summertime, and the berries are yummy (pt. 2)

It is apparently still summer, although looking out of my window, you’d never believe it, but the berries are definitely still yummy.

On the way home tonight, I picked up some Glen Ample raspberries. They are smaller and sweeter than the Tulameens we ate yesterday, strangely they have little if any smell, but they are packed full of flavour and I adore them.
I’m not going to do anything with them at all, apart from just sit here and pop them one after another into my mouth, or maybe drop a few into a glass of sparkling wine.

I also picked up some “English Rose” strawberries, an organic premium variety. They are big and meaty for strawberries, very nice but with an unusual citrus flavour.
I had a couple just to try them out, and am coating the rest in a dark bitter chocolate, then melting some white chocolate with vanilla and wrapping pretty strands of that over the dark chocolate. They look ubersexy, but the taste test will have to wait till the morning.

With strawberries, the real key isn’t the variety (premium or not), or whether they are organic or not, it’s all about ripeness. Strawberries are like brie, they are always going to taste best at the moment of extreme ripeness, and just before they start to go bad. Pick the ripest and bugger the rest, in this case I’d say organic is much more of a moral decision than a taste one.