Hedgerow Jam

I love foraging. Going for a walk and coming back with a pocketful of berries is one of my favourite things to do. Just yesterday, I had half an hour to kill at the NCT centre while my car was tested, so went for a walk and ended up with half a kilo of rosehips almost by accident (my upcoming rosehip syrup recipe and fancy cocktail suggestions will make it clear why this is An Excellent Thing).

Anyway, this autumn I've decided to chronicle my hedgerow adventures in order to share some delicious recipes with the internet (hellooo!), and also to keep a colourful record of what I've been up to in the harvest season (it'll help me get through March - worst month of the year, in my opinion).

First off is this rather spectacular Hedgerow Jam. It has elderberries, blackberries, haws, sloes and cooking apples in (I would have used crabs, but I'd already used up my store of them in the Crabapple Cheese - recipe coming later). I can't believe how delicious it is and intend to experiment with different proportions of hedgerow fruit for the rest of the harvest season. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, OMG, toast has never been happier.

All you need is.... 

Elderberries (from the Elder tree - about 500g)

   

Haws (from the Hawthorn tree, aka Whitethorn - about 250g)...

 

Sloes (from the Blackthorn tree - about 250g)...

Blackberries (from the Bramble bush - about 500g)

and cooking apples from my mum's garden (about 500g)!

Oh, and a kilo of sugar

Step 1

Soften up the tougher berries by mimicking a frost -  just shove the haws and sloes in the freezer for a few hours. 

Step 2

Put the haws and sloes in a pot and cover with cold water, then simmer them until they're gooey. Scoop them out into a sieve and, using a large ladle, push the soft red mush through the sieve until you're left with just the hard pips. Collect the mush and weigh it - mine weighted 225g.

Gooey sloes and haws

Step 3

Strip the elderberries from their stalks. This is a fiddly job that is best endured with assistance from Van Morrison and a large gin and tonic. I think the easiest way to do it is with a fork rather than fingers. Watch out for good clothes, tablecloths and unforgiving carpets: elderberries do stain, and they have a tendency to get anywhere and everywhere, so exercise caution. 

Peel and finely slice the apples and check the blackberries for beasties. Wash everything and pat it dry.

Step 4

Take the soft fruit - the elderberries, blackberries and finely sliced apples, that is - and put them in a pot. Cover with water and simmer them until soft - maybe 20 minutes.

Step 5

Once the soft fruit has, uhm, softened, you can add the gooey haw and sloe mush. It might look something like this when you do.

Step 6

Add the sugar. At this point, it's quite crucial to keep stirring as the hot sugary fruit starts to become jam and the mix starts to darken, as it might stick to the bottom a bit (which is why I don't have photos of this stage). To know if it's ready, spoon a blob onto a cold saucer and poke at the sides of it with your finger. If it wrinkles on top, it's ready. If it doesn't, it's not. Either way, don't let it boil for too long or you'll end up with solid jam that you can't get a knife into - I let mine go for ten minutes. I think that was on the long side and my jam did end up quite solid (though I like that...).

Step 7

Sterilise some jam jars by giving them a good scrub and popping them in the oven at 50 degrees or so to dry. Then spoon in your jam. While it's cooling, cut out some rounds of parchment paper and pop them on the top.

Step 8

No jar of homemade jam is complete without a gingham hat and a handwritten label! Thanks to my mum's offcuts, a 3" roll of masking tape and some surprisingly sharp pinking shears, my jam jars are quite sweet.

UPDATE 21/9/15 - I tried this again last night with a slightly different selection of ingredients and it was also delicious and a bit sharper than the other version. It made six pots.

• 250g blackberries
• 370g elderberries
• 300g cooking apples
• 100g sloes
•   60g haws
• 125g hips
• 115g crabapples
• 600g sugar