Strawberry jam is the classic, but the addition of gooseberries makes for a slightly tarter alternative. It's also a good way of increasing pectin levels, as gooseberries have a higher pectin content than strawberries.

I used frozen fruit for this jam, strawberries I'd picked from a fruit farm a few weeks earlier, and gooseberries from the garden. Both types of fruit had been prepared (hulled or top and tailed) then simmered for about 15 minutes before mashing with a potato masher and then frozen.
If you're pushed for time this can be a good way of spreading the jam making over a few days.

We've been drinking a lot of elderflower cordial recently, and stocks are getting low, so I've been looking round for other cordials to make.

Using the gooseberries from the garden seemed to make sense, they're just starting to ripen and taste wonderfully fresh.

The gooseberries are swelling nicely and early varieties are already in the shops. The fresh fruit is not to everyone's taste, but is delicious when used in jam or chutney. Why not try some of these recipies:

 

This was a nice quick easy recipe to make to use up the last of the gooseberries.
I only made about half of quantity of the recipe, as the gooseberries in the garden were rapidly being eaten by wasps, and I'd used up a lot making a delicious summer pudding using only gooseberries - highly recommended, if a bit pale looking.

This meant it was quite a quick process as it cut down the time consuming job of topping and tailing the gooseberries. The recipe also appealed as I thought it would be nice to try a chutney without all the additions such as raisins, dates, chilli etc.

The gooseberries in the garden came into season a few weeks ago, so in between showers of rain I dashed out and picked the biggest and best for making jam.

1. The latin name for the Gooseberry is Ribes uva-crispa.

I was in Manchester yesterday and popped into an old haunt, Appna Food Stores, to stock up on spices and pickles. In amongst the lime pickle and mango pickle was this jar of Gooseberry pickle, which I couldn't resist bringing home to try.

After a bit of research it turns out this is a pickle made from Indian Gooseberries (nellakai in tamil, amla in hindi) as opposed to the commen or garden English gooseberry. Bit of a shame as I had grand plans to turn the gooseberries from our overladen bushes in the garden into something hot and spicy.