Filthy Fizz Checked Recipes

STRAWBERRY AND ALMOND CRUMBLE

Steps:

• If I had to choose one thing that cooking could not make better, I'd have put good money that it would have been a bad (as in unripe and tasteless) strawberry. I'd almost be embarrassed even owning up to trying to improve it, were it not for the fact that I read an article by Simon Hopkinson, a revered British chef, in which he advised using said strawberries in a pie. So I did. Well, that's not quite true: I am lazier than him, so I made a crumble. I don't know what, how or why it happened, but this is a crumble of dreams. The oven doesn't, as you'd think, turn the berries into a red-tinted mush of slime, but into berry-intense bursts of tender juiciness. This is nothing short of alchemy: you take the vilest, crunchiest supermarket strawberries, top them with an almondy, buttery rubble, bake and turn them into the taste of English summer on a cold day. Naturally, serve with lashings of cream: I regard this is obligatory not optional.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Put the hulled strawberries into your pie dish (I use a round one) and sprinkle over them the sugar, almond meal, and vanilla extract. Give the dish a good shake or two to mix the ingredients.
• Now for the crumble topping: put the flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl and rub in the cold, diced butter between thumb and fingers (or in a free standing mixer).When you've finished with it, it should resemble rough, pale oatmeal. Stir in the sliced almonds and turbinado sugar with a fork.
• Tip this over the strawberry mixture, covering the strawberries in an even layer and giving a bit of a press in at the edges of the dish. Set the dish on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, by which time the crumble topping will have darkened to a pale gold and some pink-red juices will be seeping and bubbling out at the edges.
• Let stand for 10 minutes before serving, and be sure to put a pitcher of chilled heavy cream on the table alongside.

FRUIT FIZZ

Steps:

• Fill the glasses with about 2 scoops of sorbet, each glass having a different flavor.
• Top the glasses up with Prosecco, taking care that the fizz doesn't rise up and bubble over the top. Refill again once the bubbles have subsided, and then grate a little lemon zest over each glass and adorn with a small sprig of mint.

FILTHY FIZZ CHECKED

Steps:

• I am a great believer in offering the sort of stuff everyone can knock back without justified hesitation. I think I have told you before that - due to its mood-enhancing properties - prosecco is known chez moi as prozacco. Well, unsurprisingly, this is a drink that forms the foundation of my liquid entertaining. My favourite of all is a drink introduced to me by Anna del Conte, called Prosecco Sporco, which involves pouring a glass of prosecco and then adding a dash or two of Campari. Prosecco sporco literally means 'dirty prosecco' but somehow Filthy Fizz sounds better to me. I find it unutterably chic and absolutely gorgeous into the bargain. The bitterness of Campari is not to everyone's taste (though the bitterer the better, as far as I'm concerned) so if you are wanting to turn this into a cocktail for the sweeter toothed, I suggest a dash of Chambord black raspberry liqueur instead, if you happen to have that in your drinks cupboard.