This blog is late but I don't care.

Where I was.

I'd had it all planned. This was going to be called Red Bavarois and Berries Not but then I was waylaid by work, writing work. I was whisked away to Wotton House (above) to help plot a new series of Jekyll & Hyde with (showrunner) Charlie Higson. This is why I don't care. I am very excited about the new work. It's such fun to be on a show at the start, helping to create a world and people it with characters who may become national icons; family friends. It means this blog might suffer though. When I sit down to write, the series will come first.

My apologies to the two groups who came last weekend. I'm normally very prompt in posting the group shots but my head has been full of magic and menace.

These are Friday's vegetarian guests, corralled by Nita (tallest at the back).

Saturday's pack of carnivores. Friends of Nasli (next to the brown pillar).

I was going to give you the recipe for the new starter, a bavarois of roasted red pepper. It's based on the pea one, substituting roasted red peppers and tomatoes for the legume content. But I kinda winged the creation so I have no definite amounts. I'll do it again some time and write it up. I served it with croutons of black olive bread and a salad of bitter frisee and baby sorrel in a lemon vinaigrette. Oh, and as I was in Borough Market, I couldn't resist buying some bright orange edible nasturtium flowers. I've come to my senses now though. here's a bad picture of the meal.

And the berries? I've been cooking much with strawberries (pate sablée) and raspberries (Pavlova) recently so I was reading about them. I came across an article about the divergence in the scientific and the popular understanding of what is a berry. Normally this kind of schism is only of interest to the pub bore or the quizmaster... so here goes:

Berries are rounded fruit containing seeds. So strawberries and raspberries are not berries at all. They are aggregate fruit. Things that are berries include watermelons and bananas. Also, if a fruit is red it means it isn't pollinated by insects, who see far more of the blue and ultra violet spectrum of light. Red fruit are eaten by birds who then spread the seeds in their droppings. Red pepper bavarois is eaten by neither.