Luscious local fruit forms the berry on top

BY CHRIS FORTUNE

The best time of year is when summer berries come to the marketplace. They are sun-ripened and bursting with flavour, and explode into your mouth with freshness and taste.

These are the kind of berries I remember picking as a little fellow growing up in Motueka.

These same berries can be found at the stalls of the Marlborough Farmers' Market. The key is to buy them as soon as they have been picked, to ensure that those memories of freshness and flavour live up to expectation.

One of the keys to the market is that it is a food market. It is all about giving local food producers the opportunity to sell directly to the consumer, with no middle man. This is one of the key points of difference between a farmers' market and other types of markets. Vendors sell what they grow, farm, pickle, preserve, bake, smoke or catch themselves from a defined local area, in Marlborough's case from Rai Valley to Kaikoura.

The main aim of the market is to provide a venue for local food producers to sell edible goods directly to the consumer. It is an incubator for local food businesses, and has three basic rules that our producers follow:The product must be edible (there are exceptions for garden-related products such as flowers and worm farms).The product must come from the Marlborough region.The product must be sold by somebody involved in its production.

These are the same rules that all farmers' markets in New Zealand and Australia follow, and have been taken from America, where farmers' markets have become the backbone of the "localvore" movement, which is the understanding of where and how food is produced and gets to the dinner table.

While many of us can't understand or fix climate change and the associated issues, it is accumulation of all of the smaller things by lots of people that will make the real difference in the longer term. One of those smaller things is understanding and supporting the local food producers in your own region, and that is as simple as purchasing the best-tasting, sun-ripened berries from the Marlborough region.

BERRY CHEESECAKE

Best made the day before and then topped with fresh berries or lashings of whipped cream or natural yoghurt

250g pack digestive biscuits, crushed into crumbs

75g butter, melted

For the topping:

400g soft cream cheese

397g can condensed milk

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Juice of 2 lemons

500g mixed berries

Icing sugar to sprinkle on top

Line a 20cm spring-form or loose-bottomed deep cake tin with baking paper.

Mix the biscuit crumbs with the butter, tip into the cake tin and press flat. Chill while you make the topping.

In a large bowl, whisk the cream cheese till softened and smooth, then whisk in the condensed milk and vanilla extract (if using) to combine. Whisk in the lemon juice till the mixture thickens, then pour over the base.

Level the top and chill overnight before spreading with berries.

- The Marlborough Express