Miss Foodwise

Celebrating British food and Culture

preserves

Sea Buckthorn Berries and Various ways with them in the Kitchen

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I first came into contact with these bright orange berries on one of my trips to Sweden last year. We visited a pick your own farm where the hedges of Sea buckthorn were plenty and laden with fruit. I wondered where these rough looking shrubs with their vicious thorns as dangerous as barb wire normally grow. Sea Buckthorn grows in coastal areas in Europe and Asia, in dunes and on moors. Their Flemish name translates to ‘Dune thorn’, other names are Sand Thorn and Siberian pineapple. Their roughness reflects the landscape in which they thrive. Brisk winds and cold, draught, desolate plains. Their root system is invasive, but improves marginal soil. In some areas the bushes have even been used for soil erosion control and land reclamation projects. It sort off feels like their thorns tell us to let them be, so that they can do good for the surrounding earth, the wildlife and to bring a highly healthy berry to the people that live around them. Birds can nest in the branches, benefiting from the piercing thorns as protection agains predators.

The oval berries are tart, bitter and have little sweetness to them. They have been used for medicinal purposes for centuries, they are full of anti-oxidants, beta-carotene, vitamine C, A and E and they battle inflammation. A concentrated puree from the berries can be used to relief sunburn and some say it could be good for some skin conditions. You could call them a super food, but lets forget about that horrible hipster term shall we? The young leaves can be used for tea because of their amino-acids, fatty acids, minerals and ability to boosting the immune system. An oil is made from the berries and seeds and used for all kinds of ails. In a nutshell, the berries are good for you and the shrub is a good one to have around.

I enjoy the flavour, the mild tartness, their lack of sweetness. I bought a jar of Sea Buckthorn jam on my last trip to Sweden when I visited an apple orchard by the Baltic Sea. Of course because of their location they must have had a lot of Sea Buckthorn bushes around and in their shop they sold a jam called “Marmalat” which was more compote textured than jammy because they added a small amount of apple to the Sea Buckthorn. The jam was spread on toast and the jar empty much too soon so I started to look forward to the new Sea Buckthorn season and searched for a farm that grows the trees.

On an evening in late august my husband and I set out to visit a man with a passion for peculiar and otherwise difficult to find fruit bushes. Together we spent nearly half an hour harvesting just 500 grams of berries. The cruel thorns make harvesting very troublesome and the tree doesn’t like to let go of its berries very easily. The best method to harvest these berries and to prevent cuts in your hands from the thorns is to prune the bushes – that need a lot of pruning anyway – and freeze the branches whole. When frozen the berries are suddenly incredibly easy to pick and most just fall from the branches.

I wanted to make the jam and at the same time make as much of the fruit as I could. The jam was made by boiling the fruit, then straining the pulp. The pulp just keeps on giving, to the pulp of 500 g berries I added 1 liter of boiling water and left it to brew for half an hour. The juice that is left can be consumed as tea or juice and it is also makes a very good aperitif mixed with sparkling wine. My favourite thing to do with the juice however is to make a sorbet out of it. I’m not an ice cream lover because I’m not too fond of its sweetness but since these berries aren’t really sweet it makes for a perfect sorbet for me. Just freeze the juice in a shallow container and stir every 30 minutes until ready – or use a machine if you have one. Come to think of it, a slushy would work great too!…

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Bitter Seville Orange Marmalade – A Potted History and How to Make it

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Marmalade is like Marmite, you either love it or loathe it.
Marmalade is loved in Britain, smeared on golden toast as the last course of the English Breakfast. The humble jar of sunshine even has its own Marmalade Awards each year in Cumbria in the North of England. Anyone can send in their jar to be judged by marmalade royalty, and my friend Lisa from All Hallows Cookery School in Dorset just won with hers.
In a time when bitter flavour is bred out of vegetables and fruits, you would think many people are not that fond of marmalade. Marmalade is traditionally made from bitter Seville oranges. Originally from Asia, the Moors introduced these oranges in Spain around the 10th century. They are quite inedible in their raw state and if you can manage I salute you. Because of their sourness Seville oranges contain a high amount of pectin. In 17 and 18th century cookery books they get a mention as ‘bitter oranges’ and it wouldn’t be an British classic without a story.

The legend
In the mid 18th century a Spanish ship carrying Seville oranges was damaged by storm. The ship sought refuge in the harbour of Dundee in Scotland where the load deemed unfit for sale were sold to a local merchant called James Keiller. James’ mother turned the bitter orange fruit into jam and so created the iconic James Keiller Dundee Marmalade. It wasn’t a coincidence that James mother made marmalade, in the 1760s her son ran a confectionery shop producing jams in Seagate, Dundee. In 1797 he founded the world’s first marmalade factory producing the first commercial brand of marmalade. In 1828, the company became James Keiller and Son, when his son joined the business. Today you can see stone James Keiller and Son marmalade jars pop up at every carboot sale and antiques market. But the marmalade is still in production, only now in glass jars that off the beautiful radiant orange colour that is so typical of marmalade.

The truth as clear as marmalade
According to Ivan Day, a prominent food historian who I was lucky to do a course with, one of the earliest known recipe for a Marmelet of Oranges dates from around 1677 and it can be found in the recipe book of Eliza Cholmondeley held in the Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

The earliest recipe in Scotland is titled ‘How to make orange marmalat’ and dates back 1683. It can be found in the earliest Scottish manuscript recipe book which is believed to have been written by Helen, Countess of Sutherland of the Clan Sutherland. The book is dedicated entirely to fruit preservation and jelly making. According to The Scotsman “The Countess was married to John Gordon, the 16th Earl of Sutherland, an army officer who was honoured following the defeat of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion.”
This bit of information transports me right to the wuthering heights of Scotland.

This early Scottish as well as English recipe debunks the myth that mother Keiller invented marmalade. Recipes for similar preserves even date back earlier in history. But the Keiller family definitely deserve a prominent spot in marmalade history.

But why do we call it marmalade and not jam?
As you maybe remember from my posting about ‘Quince Cheese’ here > , quinces are responsible for the word marmalade as their Portuguese word is ‘marmelo’ and they were made into fruit cheeses named marmalades. In Spain they call it ‘Membrillo’. Quince just like bitter Seville oranges, contain a lot of pectin and they are both too sour to eat raw. From both of these fruits the pips and peels are used to get a good set, and if you don’t have quince you could easily make a fruit cheese out of these oranges….

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How to make Quince Cheese

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quince-cheese-regula-ysewijn-9003I’m not the biggest fan of sweet desserts after mains, I prefer an afternoon tea where the treats become the star of the show. That way you can enjoy them to the full and they do not become that thing you eat last when you’re actually too full to enjoy it. For an afternoon tea you can dress up, wear a hat, and pretend to be a lady of good breeding. Drinking tea with your pinky in the air, back straight, having polite conversations and enjoying the experience of eating from fine bone china. I’m also a sucker for a multi-tiered cake stand, and for clotted cream – lots of it.
Cheese and biscuits are my choice of afters and with a decent fruit cheese and port this quickly becomes my perfect kind of dessert.

Fruit cheeses are reduced jams or pastes. Centuries ago they were served after dinner as a digestive and they were often prescribed by apothecaries to cure minor ailments. The fruit paste was often pressed in a mould with fancy engravings and could look rather stunning. Moulds of this sort are rare to come by, I only know one person who has a mould and I believe he even carved it himself.

Although fruit cheeses should be thick and hold their shape, they should still be spreadable. You can make them into small cake trays for a nice shape or just in a large tray, you can then cut squares of the fruit cheese to wrap them and keep them. They are the most delectable accompaniment to blue cheese, but they can also be eaten all on their own, as a sweetie. A nice idea if you want to know what your child puts in its mouth, factory made sweets can contain all sorts of horrible additives. But it’s still sugar, make no mistake, to call it healthy would be wrong, but eaten and treated as a treat it is just fine.

My favourite fruit cheese is made of Quince. Quince are usually cooked and conserved. They look like otherworldly lanterns, large yellow pears with a strange downy covering. Raw they are considered quite unpalatable because of their tartness, but they are high in pectin which makes them ideal for making jams, jellies and fruit cheese. The pectin is most strong in the pips of the fruit, often ground up pips would be used to set other jelly like creations. But this is something I would not recommend you do as the seeds contain nitriles which turns poisonous when it comes in contact with your guts enzymes and acid. A few pips from your batch of quince are fine, just don’t chuck in a jar of ground up pips.

Quince and quince cheese was popular all over Europe since Medieval times. In Spain they call it ‘Membrillo’, in Italy ‘cotognata’ from the Italian word for quince ‘mele cotogne’ quince apple, the French call it ‘cotignac’ or ‘paté de coing’ from the French ‘coing’ for quince. Quinces are responsible for the word marmalade as their Portuguese word is ‘marmelo’ and they were made into fruit cheeses named marmalades. …

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Cherry brandy… the first step towards winter

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cherry-brandy-recipe-kriekenborrel-regula-ysewijn-8684Preparing the cherry brandy or ‘Kriekenborrel’ as we called it in Belgium, is the first step towards Christmas and winter for me. On Christmas eve when I was a child, I was allowed one single drunken cherry in a small dainty glass as a treat. This is how memories are made, and how time and time again when Christmas comes, you need certain flavours to transport you back to the past. Nostalgia and Christmas go hand in hand. It is the one western tradition that is still going strong. People prepare things like this cherry brandy and plum pudding months in advance. The anticipation grows in the jars, and by every spoonful of brandy that is poured over the pudding every week.
Preserving fruit in ‘Jenever’ which is almost identical to Gin, has been a custom in our parts for many decades. It was particularly popular in the 1950’s when my grandmother was young. Because my mother grew up with it, it was sentimental to her, which is why she taught me how to make it. I still have the last jar of cherries my mum and I drowned in Eau de Vie in 1998. It is quite special, because the jar holds memories as well as cherries. In my kitchen I have jars from 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2013. Some I give away, ladling the cherries and booze out into smaller jars to decorate with a ribbon and the date. They go to people I know will appreciate my precious preserve. Because I part with memories of making them and hope they will be cherished….

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What to do with a glut of summer fruit

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Hello you lovely lot, I am sorry for not posting as frequently as I did before. Life just has been terribly busy and choices have to be made. It is wonderful, it is glorious but I do need to find a balance so I can find the time again to share stories with you.
I had a lovely few weeks, I spoke at Europe’s largest Food Blogger Conference, Food Blogger Connect in London and a week later I was the main speaker at a blogger event in Brussels, for those who I have met there, welcome to the blog!
I am getting ready to leave for London again, where I will be living out of my suitcase while shooting an exciting upcoming cookery book. (not mine, haven’t had time for mine!) The week after that I am traveling to Dorset to be a judge in the Great Taste Awards again. Lots of beautiful food and drink to judge and after that some more lovely food at the glorious Great Taste dinner at Brett Sutton’s new place.
After that, it is back to London for a week to shoot a book.
So it is fair to say, the next time you hear from me on here will be august… I hope!

To answer some questions I have had from you guys on social media and via email when I posted my cherry brandy picture on facebook, this is what you can do with your summer fruit! I like to preserve mine, to keep for the cold winter and autumn days, to bring a little sunshine on your table. It is sun in a jar, it is happiness. So when you have a glut of fruit, get your jars out and drain them in alcohol or sugar to keep them for when you most need it, when it is chilly and rainy. Here below are some of my recipes for preserves, and at the end I’ve added some links to other recipes on other websites. Enjoy the summer fruits!

My favourite: Drunken Cherries, or Cherry Brandy. 
We call it Kriekenborrel in Belgium and I have been making it since I was a little girl. In fact my oldest jar is from 1998, which is when I started making them myself. I now have a jar most years, sometimes more than one to give as gifts for christmas (oh yes, I used the ‘C’ word in summer)
It’s just a wonderful way to preserve a cherry, you can use them served with vanilla ice, baked in cakes or puddings and just as they are in tiny little delicate glasses.

Cherry Brandy Find the recipe here

Next up is Raspberry vinegar.
The colour of this vinegar stays lovely and red even a year later, it looks the part on your larder and even more pretty drizzled over a green salad.
The vinegar is also okay to drink, but only by the thimble full as it is quite strong and pungent. As you can guess, this is also a great gift to give someone who will appreciate it.

 

Raspberry Vinegar Find the recipe here
How about a use for those damsons who are ripening on the trees at the moment? I like to make a damson cheese, it keeps for long and becomes better with age. It is the kind of preserve you can enjoy with cheese, especially a blue veined one or a fresh goats cheese as well. Fruit cheeses have been made for centuries, they are excellent to preserve a summer haul of fruit and are wonderful to tuck into. Also lovely when you cut cubes from the cheese and dip them in fine sugar to serve as a home made sweet. These sweetmeats often contained a lot of spices to aid digestion during and after a meal.

Damson Cheese Find the recipe here

When august arrives, so do the Kentish cobnuts. They are a personal favourite of mine as well as of Victorian ladies who used to nibble them from delicate bonbon dishes.
I made a cobnut brandy, and the recipe is still experimental but maybe you’d like to join in on the experiment as it needs some ageing!

Cobnut Brandy Find the recipe here

End of summer is marked by the hop harvest and while hops are traditionally used for beer, they make a mean hop brandy as well. Pick them when they are green, or just dried so that they still have all the essential flavours for this drink. My teacher in beer sommelier school uses a Belgian alcohol called Jenever for this preserve but you can try to use any clear alcohol with a min of 40 % alcohol as well.
While you are working with the hop flowers, rub some between your hands and smell the hops, it made me appreciate hoppy beer better and now I enjoy the hoppier the better.

Hop Brandy Find the recipe here

When going into autumn you will, if you are lucky, start seeing small sloes growing on the whimsical trees. They say you need a first frost before you pick them, then they are ready to bottle, preserve and keep. The traditional way to preserve sloes is in gin, Sloe gin has been a favourite winter tipple for a very very long time and still very popular today. You can also make sloe cheese from the tart little things, just follow the recipe for damson cheese.

Sloe Gin Find the recipe here

This means the end of my preserves but do take a look at these recipes from other blogs:

Lemon and strawberry preserve by Juls Kitchen, I have a jar of that in my larder and can’t wait to open it!
Mustard by Juls Kitchen, I tasted it on a sunny autumn day in Tuscany, it was great!
Apricot jam by Emiko Davies, just beautiful
Lemon marmelade by Emiko Davies, your larder needs it, your cakes too.
Rose petal jam by Emiko Davies, for the romantic
Seville Orange marmalade by The Wednesday Chef, better be prepared because it will take some months for them to arrive but you need this for your toast
Strawberry Jam by Jamie Oliver, can’t go wrong, it’s strawberry and it’s Jamie Oliver.
Plum and peach jam by Ms Marmite Lover, love the lavender in the jam

I can go on for ages, maybe look into a book? I like Salt, Sugar, Smoke by Diana Henry.

This is it for now, hopefully I’ll be back soon!

Hopping down in Kent – Hop brandy

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While driving through the rolling Kentish countryside I can’t help but shout out ‘Oast house’ when I spot the somewhat fairytale like conical rooftops of the hop kilns. I nurture my inner child with my endless enthusiasm for things other people might not even notice anymore.

These monuments of agricultural industrialisation were used for drying the freshly picked green hop flowers. They usually had two or three storeys, some with perforated floors on which the hops were spread out. On the ground flour was a charcoal-fired oven spreading warm air through the kiln which is permitted to pass through the perforated floors to dry the hops. The white wooden cowl on the roof rotates with the wind to allow air to circulate and moisture to escape to prevent mould. Although we are more used to seeing round Oast houses, the kilns started out square shaped. The earliest example dates back to the mid 1700’s and can be found in Cranbrook.

Hops
have been grown in Britain since the the late 15th century and probably
even earlier. They were introduced to Britain from Flanders where
hopped beer had become the fashion. Hops don’t only add bitterness to
beer but also act as a natural preservative. In the early Victorian era
hop growing became the most important industry in Kent as tastes changed
from un-hopped ale to more bitter beer.
The
need for hops was especially great due to the late Georgian law
forbidding the use of any other ingredients than hops and malt in beer. A
year after the law was approved, the drum roaster -used to roast malt-
was invented by Daniel Wheeler. By roasting the malt the brewers could
legally give extra flavouring and colouring to the beer by creating very
dark, roasted malt for the use in Porters and Stouts.

 

Of course those large amounts of hops needed to be picked and so each september the destitute families from London and sometimes even further away, came ‘hopping down to Kent’. If they were not completely pennyless, they could afford the ticket for the ‘Hop pickers Special’ train which left from London Bridge. If they were too poor, they had to walk to Kent. For six weeks they would live on site in hop huts to help with the hop harvest. Although the work was rough, it was a time especially the children looked forward to all year. Hop picking in Kent was a welcome change from the slums is which most of these families lived. And although the hop huts were far from luxury, it was still a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the miserable fog in London. Most of the time it would only be the woman and children who came to pick the hops. Unless if they were unemployed, the men stayed behind in the cities and worked at their jobs in the factories and the docks. The money the woman earned by hop picking was often the only pot of money they could truly manage themselves. Back in the city they would be lucky if their husbands wages weren’t spent on ale every payday.

Hop picking in Kent in this way continued until far in the 1960s, even after the introduction of the first machines. To this day, hop pickers still arrive in the Kentish hop gardens by the beginning of autumn, although now they come from much further places usually Eastern Europe. British labourers are too expensive to hire and usually don’t want to do the work. Hop picking is now far from the ‘Londoners’ holiday’ it was ones considered.

To have a peek in a hop garden, stay tuned for my next post where I will also be cooking with hops.

Today I bring you Hop brandy, a drink not very historical as I haven’t been able to find any reference to it in my books and online. It was my teacher in beer class who told us he brews a bottle of hop brandy once and a while and I got intrigued.
It’s is not safe to brew beer from wild hops, hops need to be tested for certain compounds to be ok to brew with.

Hop brandy

What do you need

Hops, I used Kentish Goldings, enough to fill your bottle of choice
A bottle of Eau de vie, Jenever or another flavourless grain alcohol

Method

Finding your hops will be trickiest part, I used beautiful Kentish Goldings which I ordered from a farm. Let me know if you need the email address of the hop farm. 200 grams left me with quite a large bag.
Back to the recipe, sort out the prettiest flowers and put them in your bottle all the way to the top.
Fill the bottle completely, leave to mature for a few months.

You might also enjoy
Raspberry vinegar >
Sloe Gin >
Damson cheese >
Cobnut Brandy >

Damson cheese and sweetmeats – a memory in a jar

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I keep the jars in the stairwell leading down to the cellar, it’s quite dark there and I can look at them, neatly arranged on their shelves, every time I need a tin of tomatoes or a bunch of spuds.

They all have labels, some decorated with water-colour images I painted, some just with the date and words of what’s in the jar. I will pick up a jar from time to time, asking myself if I should open it or leave it a little longer. Some of my cherry brandy dates back to 1999 and has become precious, if you get to try any or even receive a tiny jar with 2 or 3 cherries, you should know you’re on the top shelve of my cupboard.I love to buy fruit on my trips around England, most of the time I will end up preserving that fruit, to keep it for the colder months it is but also a memory of a lovely trip in a jar.

A year ago I stumbled upon tiny little plums, so small they could be mistaken with a large black olive. It was on an sunlit morning early in autumn, I walked passed the quaint greengrocers in the village I would dream to call home when I spotted the display of Damsons, Victoria plums and cobnuts. I wonder if the plums the greengrocer claimed to be native wild damsons are in fact sloes …I took home my brown paper bag of Sussex native wild damsons – at least I believe them to be damsons – and got busy at home making damson cheese on a rainy sunday morning. Damson cheese is an old country recipe, I can just picture the ladies using the leftover embers of the fire to stew fruit or dry flour for pastry.

In my vintage cookery books, the writers suggest to leave the cheese for a few months, or even up to two years. One shouldn’t be surprised if it would dry out a bit, it is supposed to add to the flavour.

In her book Dorothy Hartley describes the original native damson as small with black bloomy skin and green flesh. The description sounds similar to how a sloe looks but if anyone out there can shed some light on what the native damson looks like, I would love to hear it.

Hartley goes on to explain the method of making damson cheese:
Set the damsons in a stone jar and put them ‘in the bread oven when the loaves are drawn’, (or in the modern oven, cook slowly, till the juice runs freely, and the stones are loose).

 

Not having an old bread oven in my house, or a fireplace, I slowly cooked the fruit in the oven for 2 hours, in a stone jar, along with a cheap cut of beef that needed lots of simmering. I will try and get as much out of the heath of the oven as possible, remember my prunes to use in tarts? Energy is expensive and if you want to use cheap cuts of meat, the downside is the longer cooking time.


What do you need

For 1 jar (for more just double the amount of fruit and sugar)

  • 500 g Damsons or sloes, rinsed
  • 200 g raw cane sugar
  • straight sided glass jar

Method
Preheat your oven to 160° c

Place the damsons (or sloes) in an earthenware jar with a lid, I used a hotpot as it comes with a lid (used for cooking Lancashire hotpot)
Cover the fruit with the sugar, close the lid and place in the hot oven – ideally alongside your stew or some other dish that needs a long simmer. Leave the fruit to stew for two hours.

After two hours, let the fruit cool in the jar and when it is cold enough to handle pass the pulp through a sieve and keep the stones aside. If possible – they can be one tough nut to crack – crack the stones, remove the kernels and ad them to the fruit. The kernels will give a note of almond flavour to the cheese.
Pour the fruit pulp in a pan and bring to the boil until it jellies.

Scoop the thick puree in straight-sided glass jars so they can easily be turned out.
When turned out on a plate, the cheese would often be decorated with almonds and placed on the table as an accompaniment to stronger cheeses and meat. I have read of the custom of serving a glass of port with the damson cheese, or poured over it and served as a dessert on its own. The deep flavour of the cheese is wonderful with a strong blue cheese.

You can also create some sweetmeats by cutting the cheese in small cubes and then dipping them in fine sugar. An elegant little treat for the table or as a gift.

Hartley suggests to leave the damson cheese for at least 6 months and mentions the flavour improves up to two years. I left mine for a year and the cheese was almost black and packed with a decadent plum flavour and a silky sensation on the tongue.
I made sweet meats that impressed my guests with their soft texture and delightful flavour.

* I made damson cheese with the small dark plums as well as with a larger variety. The flavour of the smaller plums was slightly more intense.

You might also enjoy
Sloe Gin >
Cobnut Brandy >
Raspberry Vinegar >
Prune tarts >

Cobnut brandy to wet the baby’s head

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We are a bunch of friends, food bloggers and one of them is becoming a mom at christmas time. Much like our Food Revolution Potluck in the summer, we decided to do a Virtual baby shower for Emiko, our dear friend who moved all the way to Australia last year. We all see each as often as we can, even if we do live in different countries and continents, this virtual baby potluck was plotted in the bedroom of an Umbrian casale on one of our foodie get togethers last month. After those first talks before going to sleep, the plotting started via email, getting all excited imagining her pretty face when she finds out we’ve been planning this surprise. 
Our friendship lasts through our never ending conversation on twitter, facebook, instagram and very long emails… yet far away, we are always close…
Emiko’s blog was the first food blog I started to follow back in 2011 and the first food blogger I ever talked with when I first got on the mighty twitter.
She is one of the kindest people I know and I wish her and her husband Marco all the happiness in the world with their gorgeous little daughter end of december.

I bring to Emiko’s baby potluck a home made cobnut or hazelnut brandy for Marco, the dad to be.
It is tradition in Britain for the fathers to ‘wet the babies head‘ when their child is born. As much as it is often an excuse to get drunk, it is also part of a drinking culture that has been around for centuries. To ‘wet’ or to ‘whet’ the babies head refers to baptism, however in pagan Britain a newborn baby would most likely be celebrated with a drink… or two, or three.
Not only will there be a drink for the dad, there will be a Birthday sponge cake by Giulia, Vegan pumpkin cookies by Zita, Frollini di riso by Jasmine, Gingerbread banana muffins by Valeria, La Belle Helene by Karin, soft cheesecake by Rosella and Savory mini tartlets by Sarka. 

May you always walk in sunshine.
May you never want for more.
May Irish angels rest their wings
beside your nursery door
Irish blessing for a newborn baby

Cobnut brandy

What do you need
• 500ml jar
• 1 cup golden cobnuts*, shelled and chopped (you can use hazelnuts)
• 2 tablespoons of molasses (or cane sugar)
• just under 500 ml vodka or Eau de vie

Method
Put the chopped cobnuts in a jar and add the sugar, pour over the brandy and close the lid.
Put in a dark place and shake the jar every day morning and evening for a week.
After a week, shake the jar ones a day for a week.
I the sugar is dissolved you can leave your brandy to ripen for a minimum of 2 months.
Why not save it for a special occasion, in this case a 16th birthday?

When you are ready to use the brandy
Strain the brandy with a cheesecloth and discard the nuts
You might need to do this twice depending on how long you have been saving the brandy.
Bottle and use, or leave to mature!

Bottoms up for the newborn!
Cheers Marco and Emiko!

You might also like: 
Drunken cherries
Sloe Gin

*More about cobnuts here >

I had my mind set on Sloe Gin

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I had sloes on my mind the last two times we drove up to Kent…
On both occasions I went home without them…
My eyes were on honesty boxes by the road, people selling produce from their garden at car boot sales and little blue-ish dots in the trees we drove passed.
The location of sloe trees is a well guarded secret of those who have discovered them on foraging trips. This makes them even more mysterious to me, I just had to have some sloes. I heard stories saying the native British sloe is so very rare it only grows from ancient trees. They look like black olives, and like olives best not eaten straight from the tree. Sloes are very tart and mostly used to make jams to accompany cheese and for making sloe gin…

The
sloe or ‘Prunus Spinosa’ is a berry from the blackthorn. Sloes or blackthorns were planted
around the countryside in the 16th and 17th century as hedges around the
fields to keep the cattle in. The word ‘sloe’
comes from the Old English slāh, in Old High German slēha and in Middle Dutch sleuuwe.
Traditionally when making sloe gin,
the berries must be gathered after the first frost and one must prick
each berry with a thorn taken from the blackthorn bush. Sloe gin is made
by infusing gin with the berries. Sugar is required to ensure the
juices are extracted from the fruit. Some swear by freezing the berries
before use.

But I had no sloes…
Until a lovely lady offered to send me some of the sloes she had gathered to maker her own boozy preserves. I must say I was quite nervous for them to arrive as they are after all perishable. Luckily they weren’t reduced to jam and I was able to use them thanks to Claire who froze them for the journey. That same day the sloes would be drowned by Gin…

It is so easy to make, the hard part is keeping yourself from opening it too soon to drink it. I’ve been told a ten year old sloe gin has a wonderful flavour… so I decided to hide a bottle from myself so I can actually try it. I think I might put it behind my 8 year old cherry brandy I was able to save.

 

To Make you own sloe gin!

What do you need

500g ripe sloes
250g sugar
1 litre of Gin, I used No.3 London Dry Gin

Method

  • Prick the sloes with a thorn from the tree or a toothpick
  • Put them in a suitably sized Kilner or jam jar
  • Pour over the
    sugar and the gin
  • Close the lid
  • Shake and shake every day until the sugar
    has dissolved
  • Store in a dark cupboard

After 3 months

  •  Strain out the sloes using muslin, bottle and store in a dark
    cupboard
  • Try to wait 1 to 10 + years before opening a bottle.Thank you Claire for the sloes, I will drink to your health when I open a bottle!

You might also like
Cherry brandy
Raspberry vinegar

Raspberry Vinegar – Summer in a bottle

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As the end of summer is approaching I feel the urge to start preserving things for the winter months to come.
I made Cherry brandy to enjoy at the christmas holidays and next week the damsons are going into the copper kettle to become a gooey jam to use in pies.
This is how I hang on to those months when we had plenty of light and warmth from the sun, colorful delicate fruits at the market and fresh strawberries on our bread.
Summer in a bottle or a jar.
When autumn has deprived us of the last of the warm days, I will make a salad with perhaps some quail and walnuts, this raspberry vinegar will be used to drizzle the green leaves with a radiant red color. Like blood it will be dripping on my plate and I will remember the summers day when I bought the raspberries at a farmshop in Kent and the lunch we had after we strolled trough the little village by the sea. The Cider vinegar came from a road trip to the Cheddar gorge on my parents 35th anniversary and is the tastiest I’ve ever found. Memories are stored in this bottle if you like, if you are as romantic about it as me.

 

This recipe for Raspberry vinegar is fuss free and takes minutes to make, you only need to let the vinegar rest for 4-6 days before you strain and bottle it.
I used Isabella Beeton’s 1860’s recipe as a guide and amended where needed. As she uses a lot of sugar in hers, I didn’t in mine and I find the vinegar doesn’t need it.

Raspberries
are a rich source of vitamin C, B, iron and magnesium. Up to 20 percent
of their total weight is made up of fiber and they are also high in
antioxidants. The leaves of the raspberry plant have been used for
medicinal purposes for generations.

 


What do you need
To make 1 bottle as shown in the picture:
100g of raspberries or leftover raspberry pulp.
25 cl of good quality cider vinegar
a strainer
a funnel
a ceramic bowl

Method
Rinse the raspberries
Place the raspberries in a ceramic bowl
Crush the fruit with a fork
Add the Cider Vinegar until your bowl is completely full
Cover the bowl with cling film
Leave in a cool dark place for 4-6 days

After 3 days
Strain the vinegar and discard the pulp
Transfer the vinegar to the bottle(s) using a funnel

Leave for a month in a cool dark place, it will be autumn by then.
The vinegar will keep for at least six months.

Lovely with salad with quail, goats cheese and also with ice-cream. But I like a little spoonful from time to time… Some claim it is good to cure a cold.

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Make your own cherry brandy
Make your own butter