Damson Crumble

Damsons arrive in a hurry and leave in one. A fortnight, maybe three weeks if the weather holds, somewhere in the back end of September. I walked past a tree on the lane last week and saw them for the first time this year: small, oval, dusty-blue in the hedge, ducking under their own leaves. You could almost miss them. Most people do.

They're too tart to eat from the hand. That's the point of them. What they want is heat and sugar and time, and what they give back, once they've had all three, is a flavour no other fruit in the British year can match. Deep, winey, a bit sharp at the edge, like a plum that's had a harder life. Baked under a crumble, they burst their skins and stain everything purple-black, and you end up with a pudding that tastes like the turn of the season.

The crumble itself doesn't want to be clever. Flour, butter, demerara, oats, a handful of almonds for the top. Rubbed loose so the fruit can push through in places. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: damsons, demerara, cold cream, Sunday. The note hasn't changed because the pudding hasn't needed to.

A word on the stones. Leave them in. Yes, really. Stoning damsons is the kind of job that takes an hour and tries your patience and at the end of it you've still got half of them mashed. Bake them whole, warn the people at the table, and let everyone fish the stones out on their own plates. There are few better feelings than putting a warm bowl of this in front of someone on a cold September evening. It's the pudding that says the summer is properly done.