Sugar and Spice and all things nice

Autumn is a brilliant season in so many ways. Sure, its sad to see the end to the summer, but isn't that bitter pill easier to swallow with the abundance of tasty morsels in the hedgerows and woodlands?

This week I received a gift of hazelnuts from our neighbour and picked up a load of sweet chestnuts in the woods round my parents's place.



So, what to do with them all?



Why not combine my two favourite things - cooking and crafts? I found a yummy-sounding recipe in my Alice in Wonderland craft book. It was described as Sugar and Spice Comfits; a combination of nuts, seeds, spices, and dried fruit. I used roasted sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, blanched almonds, toasted caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds, some crystallised ginger, dried cranberries, sultanas, sunflower seeds, pinenuts and sesame seeds. Go mad - throw in whatever you have to hand (you'll want about 100g nuts, 50g dried fruit, 1 tablespoon spice seeds, 25g other seeds)!



Once I'd chosen my ingredients I made a small amount of sugar syrup by heating 50g caster sugar in a heavy pan over a gentle heat until it melted and turned into a syrup. I then removed the pan from the heat, mixed in the fruit and nuts, then spread it out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and left it to cool.



These are meant to be brilliant on icecream, or you you can just snack on them as they are (which is what I've been doing). Yummy.



And for my next trick I collected up a load of sloes from the hedgerow, bought a bottle of gin and mixed up some sloe gin (700 ml gin, 450g sloes, 150g sugar, 1/4 teaspoon almond essence).



It won't be ready to drink until the end of January so I'll have to report back then. Between now and deepest-darkest winter I'll be shaking the kilner jar regularly, at least until the sugar dissolves. It'll be ready with perfect timing to see us through the harshness of coming back from a warm holiday to the cold British winter!

Blackberry and apple season

Its harvest time of year, and around our village there is plenty of evidence of an abundant year for apples. Lots of houses have big boxes of bramleys and assorted eating apples outside with 'please help yourself' signs. And if they're offering...well, it would be rude to turn them down!

I've noticed blackberries have been less successful this year. I've managed a couple of tubs full, but not the quantities that are normally easily found at this time of year. Still, for this week's recipe apples were the key ingredient, blackberries just the finishing flourish. A classic combination, and one I never get tired of, but this time I used them in a different way (normally the pudding at this time of year is Blackberry and apple crumble). There was finally space in the freezer, so I decided to try making Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's recipe for Bramley yoghurt Ice with Blackberry sauce swirl.

I stewed the apples with sugar, purreed them, added a little honey (things seem less sweet when frozen so a little extra sweetness seemed appropriate - Hugh suggests icing sugar but I prefered the idea of honey) and left them to cool while I went out blackberry picking.



Fresh blackberries acquired I set about making a blackberry sauce by stewing them with a little sugar and cinnamon, then sieving them to leave just a thick blackberry juice.



While this cooled I mixed the apple puree with a little yoghurt and churned it in the icecream maker:



When it had finished I drizzled the blackberry sauce over the top and transfered it to the freezer for a few hours.


(sorry - not focused, but this was the only snap I took!)

Mine actually ended up sitting in the freezer for a few days before we got round to eating some of it, so it needed to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften a little before eating. I loved this. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations anyway, and a healthy, creamy, frozen pudding is a beautiful thing.

from the garden

Don't the roses in my garden look lovely?



It's purely by chance - I have the ungreenest of thumbs, but these appear to have thrived on a diet of neglect.

I have recently been reading Josceline Dimbleby's memoir Orchards in the Oasis, which talks of her time in Damascus as a child and the wonderful scents of orange blossom and rosewater in the sweets.

Its a wonderful book.

I felt inspired to try making my own rosewater for use in my cooking. Since there were so many roses climbing up the side of the house I thought they wouldn't come to any harm if I pinched a few of the petals. Rosewater can only be made with petals that haven't been sprayed with anything nasty (like pesticides), and I know my own haven't (that would be a result of the neglect).

So here's what I did:

Step 1 - Pick half a pint of rose petals


Step 2 - put in a saucepan (ceramic not metal) with 1 teaspoon of honey


Step 3 - Pour a pint of boiling water over the petals

Step 4 - Simmer until the colour of the petals bleaches out into the water (10-15 minutes)


Step 5 - Cover and leave to infuse overnight

Step 6 - Strain the liquid into a sterilised jar and refridgerate.

I'm hoping that this will keep for a couple of weeks, but I plan to try using it soon as I'm VERY curious about what it will be like. I confess I have no frame of reference as I don't think I've tasted rosewater before. I shall be blissfully ignorant if mine doesn't taste right!

Foraging

One of the great joys of country living is stumbling across delicious foods for free. Everyone knows about the joys of blackberry-ing in the autumn, but I have recently been discovering other treats in our hedgerows and woodlands.

Last year my Dad pointed out some wild garlic growing on the riverbank at the end of our garden, and I discovered that the leaves could be used to make a lightly garlicy pesto. This year I found that the old railway line a few minutes walk from our house is absolutely covered in the herb. I ventured up there a few weeks ago with a large carrier bag and picked lots and lots of wild garlic leaves. The majority of them went into a lemon, almond and wild garlic pesto (last year I used walnuts instead of almonds), which I have been stirring into pasta sauces, spreading on pizza bases, and toasting on bruschetta. It does need a bit of cooking or it can be a little bitter, but once warmed through it makes a lovely pesto.

This week I have started to notice elderflowers in bloom around my area. When I was a child we had an elder tree in the garden and I remember my parents making elderflower and elderberry wine. I was too young to try any at the time, but I am reliably informed that when it was good it was GOOD. (But when it was bad it was awful?)

So, trusty carrier bag in hand, I hit the hedgerows to pick elderflower heads one morning. It said online that they should be picked in the morning if you want a slight banana-y flavour. That sounded better than the slight cat-wee flavour they said you get if you pick them in the evening! Also, you have to pick and use quickly or they loose their lovely floral scent.

I had in mind to make elderflower cordial, so I got online to find a recipe. An article by Tom Parker Bowles yielded a method, I bought citric acid from the chemist (and was cross-questioned about how I planned to use it - apparently heroin-users need it), and was good to get going.

300g sugar, 15 heads of elderflowers, 3 quartered lemons, plus 1oz citric acid:



Then add 1 1/2 pints boiling water. Stir until the sugar is all dissolved. Leave for 24 hours, stirring regularly.



Strain through muslin. Serve ice cold diluted with sparkling water, garnished with a couple of mint leaves. You could use it with cava too for an alcoholic treat.



The drink has a dry taste on the palate; like the dryness of unsweetened lemonade. Very refreshing, and floral, but if you have a sweet tooth then you'll probably want more sugar and less lemon.



Using elderflowers got me thinking about other culinary uses for flowers. Why not make use of violets, lavender, roses, and other beauties? Watch this space....