Pass through a sieve into a bowl; taste for sweetness and add more sugar or lemon juice as necessary. Meanwhile, pur?a third of the berries in a blender with the icing sugar, eau-de-vie if using, and lemon juice. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and using a palette knife, spread the meringue to a 1cm (1/2in) thickness, roughly 30cm (12in) square. Bake for 45 minutes; the outside should be crisp, the inside soft Allow to cool. 3 medium organic egg whites 170g/6oz caster sugar 800g/1lb 5oz red berries, hulled 40g/1oz icing sugar 2 tablespoons raspberry eau-de-vie (optional) Squeeze of lemon juice 450ml/15fl oz whipping cream 3 medium organic egg whites 170g/6oz caster sugar 800g/1lb 5oz red berries, hulled 40g/1oz icing sugar 2 tablespoons raspberry eau-de-vie (optional) Squeeze of lemon juice 450ml/15fl oz whipping cream Heat oven to 140C/275F/Gas 2.Whisk the egg whites in a bowl until softly peaking. Sprinkle over the sugar, a spoonful at a time, whisking well with each addition until the meringue is smooth and glossy.

Serve the lamb with the olives and cooking liquor.Plaice ?a Meuni?Serves 2100g/3oz unsalted butter 2 x 225g/8oz plaice fillets, with skin Plain flour, for coating Sea salt, black pepper 2 lemon quarters 2 teaspoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsleyGently melt the butter in a small saucepan, and then remove from the heat Preheat a non-stick frying pan over a high heat Season the flour with salt on a plate. Pea and ham is a winning combination whatever you do with it.Plaice is another vital part of my summer It's one of my favourite fish and very underrated. I often pot-roast lamb with olives with red wine, or else I cook it the French way with flagelot beans roasted on top of garlic and thyme.May and June is the height of the pea season. It's a very aromatic vegetable which gives you a fantastic sweetness that's got a lovely clean flavour; a soup is the best way of showing them off. I think it's the richest, most aromatic berry we have.I always avoid the baby lamb that's around at Easter. The time to really be getting into this is the height of the summer where they will have been reared outdoors and grass-fed, as opposed to inside where they do not get to see a blade of grass in their lives.

They grow very well in the north of England where the weather is very suited to them and they tend not to grow them on such a big scale. British strawberries are at a very sad stage where the elsanta variety has taken over from all the others, for all the wrong commercial reasons. It is such a bland mouthful, I do not bother to eat them any more But with raspberries we get some wonderful varieties. As a child my mother used to take me to the local market garden, it was an oasis bang in the middle of suburbia and full of wonderful smells of soil and vegetables.

We would go home laden with hand-picked runner beans, courgettes and tomatoes. The smell was lovely, there was a fantastic freshness about it.Aside from vegetables, butter, is for me, the medium of British cooking. There are no olive groves in the UK so it's absolutely central to how our food tastes and its texture. A big bowl of boiled new potatoes smothered with butter is definitely a quintessential part of summer.I have always rated raspberries over and above strawberries. You can use butter in combination with olive oil, but the minute you abandon dairy, you move away from the very heart of British cooking. It goes without saying that the weather in this country is unpredictable. Because of this, we can get away with heartier food in the summer than you might in Mediterranean countries.