Mystery Mushroom #4: it's an Oyster! How exciting

I found these beautiful silvery-brown Oyster mushrooms growing from the branch stump of a birch tree in the River Field. I fried them with garlic and butter for supper this evening. Heaven!

More foraged hedgerow jam

I can't get enough of this stuff. I've got through three jars since I made the first batch in early September so, while the berries are still good, I'm making it my business to perfect the recipe and stock pile supplies to get me through the porridge season (two tsps of it at the bottom of a bowl is just heaven).

If I'm being picky though, I'd say that the first batch was too solid, the second batch was too soft, and both batches were too seedy (from the blackberries and elderberries). For this version, I've mixed up the ingredients a bit, sieved everything to within an inch of its life and watched carefully for that precise moment about 12 minutes in to a rolling boil when the mixture goes from being hot, sweet berry goo to a velvety smooth, soft-set jam. It's something about the colour and viscosity of the mix... Hard to explain but my fellow jammers will know what I mean.

Anyway, Batch 3 involved 1.5kg sugar and:

600g of sloes, haws and rosehips, frozen to soften up the skins

1.3kg crabapples, washed and chopped

1kg Blackberries

1kg elderberries

I started by stewing the crabapples and pushing the pulp through a sieve with a big ladle until I got this mush:

Next, I simmered the black and elder berries together and pushed them through the sieve like with the crabs, then I squeezed the sieved seeds through a pair of tights (clean) to get out as much juice as possible. It totalled 1.3 litres, which I then reduced on a low heat by about a quarter. I simmered the hips, haws and sloes too and once they were totally soft, I blitzed them with a food processor and sieved them as well - I got 600g of mush (including water weight).

All the gooey fruity mush was added together to make this beautiful, velvety purple puree. It tasted strong and intense, if a little tart...

...hence the need for 1.5kg of sugar. Now it tastes divine! Pictures of the finished product to come very soon.

Mystery Mushroom #3: not delicious

I found these little guys in among the leaves. They have a pale brown nipple on the top and though it looks flat now, the cap is more bowl-shaped when they're younger. We identified the mushroom but - and this will reveal my priorities here - I've forgotten the name and didn't even bother to write it down because they're not edible!

Some younger ones, up close.

A perfect autumn day

We had a magical evening by the river yesterday. Sunshine, autumn colours, a spectacular sunset, bright moon, bonfire and a beautifully clear night made it all quite perfect.

We took paint and brushes to mark up trees for thinning and pruned back some over-enthusiastic beech trees. 

I'd only planned to do a bit, but we ended up doing rather a lot, which resulted in a massive and spectacular bonfire. These are the dying embers... 

Mystery Mushroom #2: it's a Blewit!

I found this mushroom among beeches and larches - there were a whole clump of them poking up through the thick leaf fall, between 6cm and 10cm wide at the cap. I brought some in to college and we identified them as Blewits - edible and delicious, apparently, with a fruity fragrance and sweet, silky flesh. Mine have gone old and maggoty now, unfortunately, so I'll have to wait until next year to sample them. 

Mushrooms #1: Brown Birch Bolete (Leccinum scabrum)

What's the largest organism on the planet? Hint: it's not a blue whale...

I found this mystery mushroom in the river field near a grove of birches. Just in case it turned out to be edible, I cooked it in butter and thyme and froze it in anticipation of a future stew. There was just something tasty-looking about it. See?

Following some investigations with mycologist friends, it was successfully identified as a Brown Birch Bolete (Leccinum Scabrum). It's about 15cm high by 12cm at its widest point, had a shiny chestnut-coloured top and an unusual spongy layer on the underside of the cap. Most mushrooms have gills, but Boletes have tiny tubes instead. They're really quite beautiful up close. 

 

I haven't actually eaten it yet - it's still in the freezer - but I will update soon with a taste test! And if you're interested, this is a very good podcast on the wondrous world of fungi.

Oh, and the answer to my question posed at the start: it's a 2,384-acre honey fungus in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. It's thought to be over 2,000 years old.

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