Geoffrey Smeddle on summer fruits

The Fife Larder - Chef's Choice

Head chef Geoffrey Smeddle tells us why The Peat Inn feels like home when summer fruit starts pouring in, and why gooseberries deserve more attention

I grew up in rural Kent near fruit farms which allowed you to wander among the perfumed rows of strawberries and raspberries, hand-picking your own. The Peat Inn provides an unexpected sense of home from home: within a ten-minute drive of our kitchen are three superb fruit farms with berries, black- or whitecurrants, sometimes loganberries and tayberries too.

Scotland, and Fife especially, provides some of the finest soft fruits in the world yet my favourite is the much less used and, in my view, more elegant gooseberry. Whether pale jade green or dusky pink, this is a fragrant, sophisticated addition to desserts, especially combined at the height of summer with the heady muscat scent of elderflower.

● Geoffrey Smeddle is the chef/proprietor of The Peat Inn, near St Andrews.

● Pick your own fruit farms in Fife include Pittormie, Cairnie and Blacketyside.