Beautiful boozy blackberries

By Sarah Watson

Blackberries-zoomDue to its mix of tart and sweet, blackberry lends cocktails, from gin and vodka to scotch and bourbon, a good sweet and sour balance as well as rich flavour. Here I’ve gathered some of the tastiest cocktail recipes from around the web, using blackberries.

Some of these cocktails use a delicious French-style blackberry liqueur, which can be easily be made at home: Infuse around 250g blackberries with 70cl vodka and 100g sugar for around three months (add some citrus zest if you fancy) shaking occasionally, then strain through a fine sieve, or muslin. You can then filter again if you want a clear liqueur – coffee filters do the job. Add more sugar to taste if required, shake regularly again until the sugar has dissolved, then decant into a sterilised bottle and seal. Your liquor will benefit from maturing for a few more months – if you can wait that long!

October is the tail end of the blackberry season,  but don’t worry if the berries are getting a bit seedy or aren’t very sweet, because sugar is added to the infusion and it’s filtered before drinking. Although if the berries are over-ripe and soggy, mouldy, tasteless, or just don’t taste nice, they’re past it! Alternatively you may have some stashed in the freezer.

The Hedgerow Sling from Absolut Drinks is a sour style of cocktail using sloe and lemon juice along with blackberry liqueur. This cocktail recipes use simple (sugar) syrup which is simple and inexpensive to make at home..here’s how.

Absolut Drinks’ Bramble Mimosa mixes floral and rich berry flavours in a twist on the Kir Royale. Champagne (or you could use sparkling wine) tops up Chambord black raspberry liqueur, blackberry liqueur and elderflower cordial.

This Blackberry Gin Smash is a fruity alternative to traditional G&T, adding fresh blackberries muddled with lime juice. This recipe uses simple (sugar) syrup which is easy and inexpensive to make at home..here’s how.

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Crazy about crab apples

By Sarah Watson

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The original native crab apple tree (Malus sylvestris) is a valuable wildlife habitat and food plant that’s now uncommon in the wild. The abundant, fragrant blossoms attract bees, and birds and mammals eat the yellow-green fruit. The wild native species is a smallish thorny tree of woodland edges and hedgerows with a habit of becoming ‘crabbily’ gnarled and twisted. But there are also many cultivated, ornamental varieties and species of crab apple, and apple trees from discarded pips growing wild also tend to produce small ‘wildling’ apples. Whether cultivated, wildling or wild, crab apple fruit is usually somewhat sour, bitter and dry-tasting but this intense apple flavour works well in many recipes, including drinks, which makes it a wonderful ingredient in my eyes!

Crab apples are in the rose family – Rosaceae. The deciduous leaves are arranged alternately on the twigs and can vary in shape, but are roughly oval or round with a pointed end and finely serrated edges. As the tree grows older, the scaly, greyish bark becomes cracked. The five-petalled flowers are white or pink with numerous yellow stamens, and appear in April and May.

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I love the variety of crab apple fruit, they can range in diameter from less than a centimetre to around five centimetres, and can be oval as well as round. The little apples may be green, yellow, red, or prettily flushed with pink or red. The fibrous stalk is long in relation to the size of the fruit when compared to a standard sized apple. Cutting the apples in half at right-angles to the stalk reveals the distinctive five-pointed star-shaped apple core where the seeds (pips) develop. The fruit is ripe when it begins to fall off the tree and the seeds turn brown.

Crab apples, like all apples, contain some vitamin C and may contain significant quantities of antioxidant compounds, such as anthocyanin (the dark red pigment in some  apples) and quercetin which may help prevent cancer, asthma and diabetes. Crab apples are also high in pectin, which has been shown to help reduce cholesterol levels and may reduce the risk of heart disease. There’s something in the old saying ‘an apple an day..’! Like all apples, the skin, and just under the skin, is where the nutrients are most concentrated, so to get the most of the beneficial compounds, process and eat the skin along with the flesh.

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Crab apples have long been associated with love and marriage. Apples were thought to have magical powers and the Celts knew them as the tree of love. Folklore says that if you throw crab apple pips into the fire while saying the name of a lover, if the lover is faithful the pip will explode in the heat, but if they are not, the pip will burn silently!

Always use a good plant identification book when foraging, and remember to leave some fruit behind for the wildlife.

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Crab apples make excellent jams, jellies, pickles, apple sauce, sorbet, syrup, cordial and cider. They were traditionally roasted and added to wassail, which contained ale or cider with sugar and spices…Here’s my round-up of recipes from the web – you could use cooking apples, like Bramleys, for any of these recipes if you can’t get crab apples:

Crab apple leather makes a super snack, here’s a recipe from The Hedgerow Cookbook. You need to spread out the puree to about 5 or 6 mm thick with a spatula or spoon before drying in a low oven (50°C is ideal – for that you may need to prop your oven door slightly open), or a food dehydrator. You can add other fruit, flavourings  or  spices to the mix such as cinnamon, fennel seeds or hogweed seed. I’d advise removing cores and stones at the start if you can, that way you can blend up the fruit skins and get the benefit of all the nutrients concentrated there.

Try crab apple, orange and cider jelly in gravies and sauces, as an accompaniment to roast pork or cheese, or it’s delicious enough just to spread as it is on buttery toast. This fab recipe’s from voluntary community group West Ealing Abundance which uses London fruit that would otherwise go to waste.

What about a spiced crab apple (or quince) butter from Gail Duff’s Country-side Cook Book for spreading over cakes or on warm scones.

Or try Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s blackberry and crab apple cordial.

And last, but certainly not least, here’s Abel & Cole’s recipe for crab apple whisky, make in autumn/fall in time for Christmas!

Discover more about identifying and cooking with wild herbs and flowers on a Wild Feast foraging & cookery course.  Get wild food and drink tips and updates on courses on Facebook and sign up for my e-newsletter for wild food & drink recipes direct to your inbox (option to unsubscribe at any time).

Heady honeysuckle

By Sarah Watson

 

With its intoxicating scent, curvy Art Nouveau-style blooms and understated pastel yellow and blush-pink hues, common honeysuckle is surely the most elegant wild flower. Even its name, Lonicera, sounds like a siren of the silver screen.

There are over 180 species of honeysuckle, some of which may be toxic to varying degrees. The flowers of a few species are considered edible, including UK native common honeysuckle, or woodbine (Lonicera periclymenum). In summer, wild honeysuckle can be found flowering in woodland, scrubland, hedgerows and along roadsides. There are showy, garden varieties of it too – as pictured above. It’s a twining shrub with opposite pairs of untoothed, pointed leaves and stalkless, trumpet-shaped flowers arranged in whorls which are followed by clusters of red berries.

Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) introduced from eastern Asia and naturalised in parts of Southern Britain, also has edible flowers. Its trumpets, in shades of creamy-white and yellow, are borne in pairs (pictured below) and followed by small, spherical black berries. It’s quite invasive in the wild in the UK and can be harmful to native plants, so you don’t need to worry about taking too much.

It takes just a small quantity of the deliciously-fragranced blossoms to capture their honeyed, floral flavour. Honeysuckle-infused water can be used to make refreshing sorbets, cordials or conserves. A jelly goes nicely with some thick slices of ham, or in a summer cream tea with some fresh raspberries or strawberries.

Use my honeysuckle syrup recipe below to make a vinaigrette, jelly, or for a refreshing drink, add chilled fizzy water and a splash of citrus juice, or even yuzu. Honeysuckle syrup goes well with tequila or brandy in cocktails. Or try ‘Suck my Honey’ – my gin and honeysuckle cocktail recipe with lime and orange blossom water – find it on the Difford’s Guide website in my article on using honeysuckle in drinks.

The berries of most honeysuckle species are said to be mildly poisonous, as are the leaves. Pictured below are the berries of common honeysuckle.

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Photo by: Brian Robert Marshall, licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Harvest native honeysuckle lightly from several places, taking a little from each patch and leaving some flowers for the bees and moths which feed on its nectar. Take individual, freshly-opened trumpets, leaving unopened flowers to bloom, and leaving the stalk and flower base behind for berries to form, as birds and other wildlife feed on them.

Honeysuckle syrup recipe

Makes one bottle – about 700ml

Ingredients:

  • Large handful of fresh honeysuckle trumpets – all green bits removed
  • 500ml hot water – recently boiled
  • 500g sugar
  • Juice of half a lemon

Method:

Soak your honeysuckle flowers in enough water to cover them. Leave overnight at room temperature to cool, then pop in the fridge to infuse for another day or so.

Strain through a sieve lined with muslin (or kitchen paper) into a measuring jug.

Add equal quantities of sugar (in grams) to liquid (in millilitres), along with the juice of half a lemon for each 500ml.

Put into a saucepan and bring to the boil slowly, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Simmer gently for 4 minutes.

Funnel into a sterilised glass bottle and seal. Keep in the fridge once open,and use within a month. Or let the syrup cool and transfer to a sterilised plastic bottle for freezing – leave some headspace to allow for expansion.


Always use good plant identification books to identify your finds to 100% certainty before eating them.

Discover  more about identifying and cooking with wild herbs and flowers on a Wild Feast foraging & cookery course.  Get more wild food tips and updates on courses on Facebook and sign up for my e-newsletter for wild food recipes direct to your inbox (option to unsubscribe at any time).

Elderflower – delicate floral cocktail mixer

 



 

 

By Sarah Watson

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To make the most of the wild elder tree’s superb summer blooms while the elderflower season’s in full swing, I’ve gathered the coolest cocktail recipes from around the web using elderflower cordial.

Making your own elderflower cordial is simple and inexpensive, I add lime for extra zing – here’s my elderflower cordial recipe.

Elderflower’s refreshing and gentle floral flavour works well with gin and vodka, but also tequila, white rum, sparkling wine, cider and even beer. It marries well with fruit such as raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, rhubarb, apple, pear and peach as well as citrus flavours.

From UKTV’s Good Food website, this Gin, apple and elderflower cocktail is a long drink over ice with lime, mint and cloudy apple juice.

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This Strawberry mint elderflower and gin cocktail (above) from Caroline Taylor’s blog, All That I’m Eating, is super summery with strawberries, gin and mint leaves, topped up with tonic or soda.

For a refreshing and simple elderflower cocktail, try this elderflower collins  from Absolut, with vodka, soda and lemon juice.

Dreaming of a daiquiri? Try this Elderflower and mint version from UKTV’s Good Food channel, with white rum, freshly squeezed lime juice and mint.

Fancy some fizz? Martha Stewart’s rhubarb elderflower bellini is a sparkling cocktail infused with the tart taste of rhubarb. Or how about this elderflower and lime spritzer  from writer and TV cook, Jo Pratt, with sparkling wine, fresh lime juice and mint leaves.

This Pear and elderflower martini is a vodkatini drink with pear juice from Scottish bartenders, Social and Cocktail.

Last but not least, why not try mixing the exotic La Boheme with elderflower liqueur, vodka, black raspberry liqueur and cranberry?

Discover  more about identifying and cooking with wild herbs and flowers on a Wild Feast forage, cook and eat course.  Get more wild food tips and updates on courses on Facebook and sign up for my e-newsletter for wild food recipes direct to your inbox (option to unsubscribe at any time).

A wee wild dram: whisky for wild infusions

By Sarah Watson

Whisky in a glass

The Guinea Pig and I went on a whisky-tasting pub visit around Christmas time for the sole purpose of reviewing some budget-end whiskies to see which we thought would be best for making wild infusions with…Some were just about OK, and there was at least one real stinker in the pub house selection, but anything too harsh or peaty would be too overbearing to suit complex wild fruit flavours, or fruit wood infusions (something I’ve yet to try). We came to the conclusion, after trying several brands, that Famous Grouse would be passable for making blackberry whisky, or smooth, sweet blend Whyte and Mackay Special seemed a even better bet.

However, a few weeks later on Burn’s Night, we were invited by GP’s dad, former Merchant Navy captain Bob, for haggis, home-made sausages, neeps and tatties. Smoked fish is also traditional for a Burn’s supper, and so to contribute to the spread, I took along a wild appetiser of hand-caught home-smoked mackerel crostini with horseradish cream and snipped three-cornered leek.

To accompany our Burn’s supper, the venerable seaman offered us Aldi’s own brand, award-winning Highland Earl Scotch whisky. The verdict was that it’s a very quaffable blended whisky at a budget price. It’s certainly not harsh, but soft and quite sweet with a gentle aftertaste. Some might say it’s not particularly flavoursome, but it’s just what I’m looking for for making blackberry whisky…

Blackberry on bush

The whisky’s sweetness and hints of oak, butterscotch and vanilla will complement wild fruit flavours, and its gentleness means it won’t be overpowering…best of all it won’t break the bank, so you don’t have to hold back on your wild booze infusions. You heard it here first!

Discover  more about identifying and cooking with wild herbs and flowers on a Wild Feast foraging & cookery course> book here.  Get more wild food tips and updates on courses on Facebook and sign up for my e-newsletter for wild food recipes direct to your inbox (option to unsubscribe at any time).

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