Bakes & More   +  recipe

There's a William Faulkner quotation that I read not long ago:
"Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out."

The idea that writing is a craft that you can learn, just as a carpenter will learn how to construct a timber framed building, is one that I find profoundly reassuring especially when, as so often happens, I feel like Sisyphus, battling constantly to push words uphill. It is also an excellent justification for why I read The National Enquirer every week. All in the name of research obviously.
I studied a lot of ancient literature during my degree. I have spent years constructing and deconstructing sentences in Latin and Ancient Greek, teasing out the meaning from the order of the words and the parts of speech used. When people ask my why I did a degree that appears to have no practical applications, I talk about how it's taught me to analyse language and appreciate a finely built sentence. It's taught me to be a better reader and a much, much better writer.

I read a lot of PG Wodehouse while I was at university. In particular, the lighthearted escapades of Jeeves and his valet, Wooster, seemed liked an excellent contrast to the world of Greek Tragedy were women murder their children and men kill their fathers. But, as if to exemplify Faulkener's point, I learnt just as much Wodehouse about how to write as I did from Aeschylus or Euripides.
I read somewhere that Wodehouse treats the written word as 'an intoxicationg plaything'. Consider, for example, the frequently quoted line from The Code of the Woosters -"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled." Wodehouse writes with utter confidence; the words sweep you along, tumbling after each other in wave upon wave of playful headiness.
All of which takes me neatly onto gooseberries.

Gussie Fink-Nottle, a man of whom it also said that "many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight", visits Bertie Wooster after a particularly taxing night and an altercation with a cab driver. His "face was pale, the eyes gooseberry-like, the ears drooping, and the whole aspect that of a man who has passed through the furnace and been caught in the machinery". While Wodehouse was not the first to use gooseberry-eyed, his description of Gussie captures his appearance, and more, perfectly. With just a few words, I can see him as clearly as if he was standing before me now.
Gooseberries are not exclusively found in the UK - they grow throughout Europe and in the north west of Africa for a start - but they have been a mainstay of the British summer for hundreds of years. They need a touch of sugar to bring out the flavour and temper the sharpness but that is all really. A jammy puddle of gooseberries nestled under a buttery golden crumble topping is pretty much my idea of heaven.
~ Gooseberry crumble Yield: Serves 4
Gooseberries vary in sweetness depending on when in the season you get them. Like rhubarb, I think the tartness of gooseberries is something that should be embraced and celebrated and so I err on the side of less sugar. A tablespoon should be enough unless your gooseberries are really mouth-puckeringly sour. I sometimes think that I should make a more fancy crumble topping but, in the end, I always make it like my grandmother did with flour, sugar and butter and nothing else. If you're interested in some more gooseberry recipes, Imen has a recipe for a classic gooseberry jam. This crumble cake from Nigel Slater sounds pretty darn delicious. Finally, a couple of gems from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - gooseberry ice cream and a gooseberry and strawberry tart.

• 450g (about 4 cups) gooseberries
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 160g (1 1/4 cups) flour (I used a gluten free flour blend, pretty much anything works though)
• 85g (1/2 cup) demerara sugar
• 85g (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, cold and chopped into cubes