Early summer foraging - nettles, wild garlic, hawthorn and bramble

It's a great time of year for greens - for salads, soups and teas - so I've been out picking.

This is a really simple soup - wild garlic stalks (just the soft bits, chopped up) and nettle leaves, plus a little bit of pre-roasted butternut squash to thicken it and some veg stock. Simple, quick and tasty!

A tray of bramble (blackberry) and hawthorn leaf, drying for tea. I ended up mixing it with some wild water mint I picked and dried last year and it tastes delicious - fresh and light. Hawthorn is supposed to be great for regulating cholesterol and blood pressure. Bramble is good for sore throats, apparently. 

Elderberry prosecco!

Quick and easy this one - two dessertspoons of elderberry cordial in a glass of prosecco. Heaven, and festively red.

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.

Rosehip syrup

Rosehip syrup is versatile and delicious, with a delicate, exotic flavour. You can use it as a base for a drink, as a topping for porridge or pancakes, pour it on ice cream, mix it with natural yoghurt or use it as a flavour in cocktails - rosehip bellini anyone?! Rosehips are also good for you. They have 20 times as much vitamin C as an orange and are rich in vitamins A, K and B (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin), so it's a great winter tonic.

You will need...

300g rosehips

300g sugar

Step 1

Wash the rosehips and chop them roughly. Then soften them up by mimicking a frost - just leave them in the freezer for a couple of hours.

Step 2

When they're suitably softened, bring 600ml water to the boil. Add the rosehips, bring it back to the boil, then remove from the heat and leave them to steep in the water for 30 minutes.

Step 3

Strain the liquid out using one or two layers of muslin cloth in a sieve.

Step 4

Return the rosehips to the pan, add another 600ml of water. Bring it to the boil, then again remove from the heat and leave to steep for another half an hour before straining.

Step 5

Put all of the rosehip liquid back in the pan and boil it until it reduces by half.

Step 6

Stir in the sugar until it dissolves, then put the heat back on and boil it hard for five minutes.

Step 7

Once cool, pour the syrup into sterilised jars or bottles. It'll keep for a few months, but to be on the safe side, store it in the fridge.

Crabapple 'Cheese' Chutney

Crabapple cheese is one of the weirder recipes I've come across on my quest for the finest hedgerow-related eating opportunities, but it has quickly become a favourite.

It's called a cheese, but it's more like a firm chutney/jelly-type thing that you eat with cheese. It has a distinctive floury texture that is offset beautifully by the apple-y sweetness and hint of spice. I've eaten it with brie, goats cheese and cheddar (especially good with strong cheddar), it's brilliant in chicken sandwiches, and - though I haven't actually tried it yet - I have a suspicion that it will work very well with porridge as a compote*. It's really easy to make, and much less fiddly than jam.

*Update on this tomorrow morning

All you need is:

1.5 kilos of these little beauties (from the crabapple tree)

Half a litre of sweet cider

Half a tsp of ground cinnamon

Half a tsp of ground nutmeg

Half a tsp of ground cloves

Sugar (we used white caster, but soft brown is good too)

Step 1

Wash and drain the apples. Chop them into bits - halves or quarters.

Step 2

Pop them in a heavy pan and with the cider and simmer until they're pulpy.

Step 3

Tip the pulp into a sieve, put the sieve back over the pan and push the pulp through with a ladle.

Step 4

Weigh the puree and add half of this weight in sugar (2:1). Stir the mixture over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Add the spices, bring it back to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer while stirring until the mixture has thickened.

Step 5

Pour into sterilised jars, top with a circle of parchment and seal.

Step 6

Enjoy with homemade brown bread and lashings of creamy goat's cheese

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

Hawberry Brandy

Harvested hawberries  

This is a great recipe for anyone looking for an excuse to enjoy an unusual winter spirit. Hawberry brandy is easy to make, yummy to drink, and has the added bonus of being traditionally used by herbalists as a medicinal tincture to regulate cholesterol, improve blood pressure and boost circulation. What more could you ask for?

If you've actually got a heart condition though, do check with your GP before casting aside the cardiac pills and skipping merrily down the hawberry brandy route - according to WebMD.com, it can have some major interactions with common heart medication.

You will need...

Lots of fat, juicy, ripe haw berries (from the Hawthorn tree, also known as Whitethorn)

Some brandy. And that's about it. 

Step 1

Firstly put the haws in the freezer for a few hours - this mimics the frost and softens the berries, saving you the hassle of pricking all the skins with a needle.

The key ingredients: brandy, frozen haws, jar

Step 2

Next sterilise a bottle or Kilner jar, half fill it with haws, pour in the brandy (it must be 40% alcohol - anything less and it's likely to go mouldy) right up to the top of the bottle. Some people add a bit of sugar, but you don't have to.

Screw the lid on tightly and pop it in a dark, cool cupboard for two to three months to macerate. Shake it every few weeks. After a couple of weeks, the colour will start to seep out of the haws and they'll look a bit insipid. This is quite normal.

Step 3

Unlike my other recipes, I'm yet to actually taste this one as it takes such a long time to do its thing, so I'll have to let you know what it's like in December. I'm going to err on the side of caution by freezing some haws now and if it's really delicious, I'll make another batch in the new year.