Mulberry crush

This week there has been an overwhelming feeling that summer is coming to an end. Not just the pile of new coats, shoes and lunchboxes awaiting name labels but also longer shadows and perceptively shorter days. The pungent whiff of autumn; the sweet rot of the leaves and first puffs of woodsmoke still absent, but near.

This impending gloom makes a trip across the lane to our village orchard irresistible. The orchard offers numerous ancient fruit trees; quince, apple, plum, medlar and mulberry. Last year we tasted quince for the first time, but managed to miss the mulberries, so I was determined to look out for them this year.

The sharp, winey flavour of the fruit was a surprise, quite unlike anything else I can think of but closest to blackberries. A mulberry yields it's juice so lavishly it's unsuitable to be sold in shops. It's bloody, violent seep is remarkable, irrevocably staining your nail beds just as Pyramus' blood stained the white mulberries in Ovid's tale of forbidden love. It's worth seeking out, as Jane Grigson advises the likeliest spot for these grand trees are castle, manors and old vicarages.

I am sure mulberries would jam beautifully, but I only gathered a few hundred grams so I am going to pair them with some of the little sharp orchard apples in a crisp strudel and serve it warm with very cold, dollopy thick cream.