Elderflower cordial recipe

By Sarah Watson, forager, Wild Feast

© Recipe, blog words and images copyright Wild Feast, all rights reserved

Making your own elderflower cordial is simple and inexpensive, I add lime for extra zing. This cordial can be diluted as a drink, used in cocktails, as a drizzle, or an ingredient for desserts, sorbets and

ice lollies. The citric acid is optional if you’re using your cordial straight away – it extends the life of the
cordial by making it more acidic which helps prevent bacteria growing, and also adds tartness to the
flavour. You can get it from some chemists, home brew shops or online (choose a reputable
company).

Pick your elderflowers on a dry day (the pollen is important for flavour), and leave some flowers to
form fruit for wildlife later, as well as for elderberry recipes. Avoid any blossoms turning brown, and
pick those with the nicest scent. Choose blossoms that look clean, away from busy roads, or anywhere that may have been treated with chemicals.

Makes between 1.5 and 2 litres of cordial

Ingredients

  • 20-30 elderflower heads (unwashed)
  • 1.5 litres water
  • 1 kg sugar
  • 2 lemons, juice and zest
  • 1 lime (or another lemon if you prefer), juice and zest
  • 2 heaped teaspoons food grade citric acid (optional
    – you can add the juice of another lemon or lime for extra tartness instead, if you like )

Method

Shake the elderflowers gently to remove any insects. Use a fork or your fingers to remove the florets
(tiny flowers) from their stems into a large pyrex or ceramic dish (with a lid). Add the citrus zest to the
flowers.

Boil the water and pour it over the elderflowers and zest, cover with a lid and leave to infuse
overnight. Once cooled, it can be left in the fridge like this for up to two days.

Strain the citrus juice through a sieve, lined with a scalded jelly bag or muslin, into a saucepan. Then
strain the elderflower infusion. Add sugar and citric acid to the pan. Bring gradually to a simmer,
stirring to dissolve the sugar. Let it boil gently for a couple of minutes, then skim off any foam.

Funnel the cordial while still hot into warm, sterilised glass bottles, and seal. Alternatively let the
cordial cool, then pour into sterilised bottles leaving some room (at least 10%) in the bottle for
expansion, and freeze.

Once opened, store in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks, or several months if citric acid was
used. Dilute at around one part cordial to five parts water – fizzy or still – or try it mixed with sparkling
wine or cocktails.

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.

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).

Crazy about crab apples

By Sarah Watson

crabapple-193676_600
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.

crab-apple-341477_640

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.

crab-apples

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.

crab-apples-51558_640-green

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).

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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