Cassis

I rediscovered a bottle of black currant (cassis, in French) syrup living in the back of the fridge. I made it in that briefest of black currant seasons, in 2023, by layering sugar with the pungent, musky fruit. The dark syrup forms quickly but I leave it in its glass jar for a week or more before straining it. The fermented syrup stays active and alive, so that's why it resides in the cold. Leave that chilled bottle closed at room temperature for even half an hour, and it goes fffft! when you open it. It lives. A delightful probiotic.

The flavor is deep and tart and sweetly intense. And here about a tablespoonful went into a Bombay Sapphire G&T. To be sipped on the terrace with the singing of the robins and the mockingbirds, the constant morse of the sparrows, the high chase-calls of the tilting chimney swifts.

(After the syrup is strained, the leftover black currants do not go to waste. It's either a black currant chutney, a jam, or dried fruit, as an imperative Step 2. In 2023 it was chutney, because I eat more of it than I do jam. At least, I did then. Things change.)