Photo: Pine needles

It was Danny’s turn to buy the Balsamic vinegar last weekend. Someone had put an expensive bottle of Balsamic beside the cheap ones in Tesco and he ended up paying five times more than he could have. The resulting shriek got me thinking about Balsamic vinegar in general.

The price and quality of Balsamic vinegar can vary enormously. We have a very expensive bottle that we use occasionally for dipping or salads and generally have a ‘cheap’ bottle that we use for cooking. But cheap Balsamic vinegar is still much more expensive than other vinegars.

We use it a lot in cooking as it adds a wonderful depth to slow cooked stews and casseroles. I couldn’t think of a way of making a cheaper alternative until I came across this recipe for pine needle vinegar on Eat Weeds. Apparently it tastes similar to Balsamic vinegar.

Danny was suspicious.
“I just don’t see how it could work. Anyway where are you going to get pine needles from?”

The recent storms sent us a small branch from one of Anne Mary’s Wellingtonian pine trees. A perfect present from her woods. I was delighted with the bounty. Robin Harford suggests nibbling the pine needles from several trees to chose a good aromatic one. There was no choice involved for me but I nibbled a pine needle and it tasted rather good – rich, earthy, aromatic flavours. I could see that the combination of the pine needles infused in cider vinegar could taste wonderful.

So that’s what I’ll be making today. It should be ready by the New Year and already I can’t wait to taste it.

Photo: Old tactor and strawberries

One of the things that I’ve always longed for is to spend time with someone who can teach me about foraging in depth. There are courses but rarely local to me. Also some of the best ones can be ridiculously expensive once you add the price of the petrol and staying overnight.

I have several foraging books and these have proved to be very useful – especially the small edition of Richard Maybe’s Food for Free which can be slipped into a pocket or Jalopy’s glove compartment. But I knew that I wasn’t even beginning to take full advantage of the free food that’s on offer nearly all year round.

I subscribe to Robin Harford’s site Eat Weeds which is a brilliant resource for foraging recipes. That is where I found out how to make rosehip tea. This site is also promoting Marcus Harrison’s Wild Food Mentor course. Not having found a personal mentor I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the course. This is a seven month video course paid for in monthly instalments.  I have found it to be all that it promises and so much more. Each month a range of plants is examined in depth – history, healing and culinary uses. Clear identification is through videos and photos. Marcus is a companionable guide.

It is just like going out with a chatty and relaxed professional forager. Here are plants that I’ve never even heard of before. Loads of information and even better I can learn at my own pace and watch the videos tucked up in bed.

If you have an interest in increasing your foraging skills and knowledge this course is well worth considering. I’ve learnt masses already and I’m only half way through module one.

N.B. Marcus Harrison is now offering a discounted course to Cottage Smallholder readers click here to view.

Photo: Jars of rosehip tea

“Those two rose bushes beside the back door are totally out of control and need cutting back.” Danny remarked back in June.
I couldn’t oblige as I was planning to make tea. The bushes got more and more flamboyant until they were given a harvesting haircut at the weekend.

There are lots of roses growing in the cottage garden so we have a profusion of hips for preserving in the Autumn. I usually make rosehip and apple jelly and sometimes rosehip syrup but this year I’d discovered the huge benefits of drinking rosehip tea.

This would be less figure challenging than all that sugar and also preserve most of the vitamins and nutrients that are contained in the rosehips. Apparently they are packed with vitamin C A, B, E and K. Drinking the tea is said to help build the body’s immune system and combat colds and fevers. This tea also is believed to relieve mild arthritic pain and flush out the kidneys and urinary tract.

I mentioned on our forum that I’d found a great site for foragers – Eat Weeds and I used Robin’s method for drying and preparing the rosehips for tea. I was tickled to see that he has the same food dehydrator as me. He has a nifty method for removing the little hairs from the hips – they are a bit of a nightmare and are ultra itchy. Perhaps this could be a new sideline – selling itching powder to the children in the village?

I packed the dehydrator with rosehips and ended up with just these two jars so I’ll be foraging in the garden for more today. Tonight I’ll try my first pot, two heaped teaspoons infused for 15 minutes sweetened with a little honey. It’s supposed to be most effective taken at bedtime.

Photo: Wild cherry plums

I’ve had quite a few emails recently about identifying hedgerow fruit so I thought that it might be helpful to post some of the pictures that I have. Sloes, wild damsons, wild cherry plums and bullaces all came from the same family – albeit distant relations. They all have stones and the bushes have similar leaves.

Photo: Sloe on a branch

The main problem seems to be differentiating sloes and wild damsons as they are both small and dark. Sloe bushes have sharp thorns and wild damson trees do not. Damsons have longer stems so hang and look more like a tiny plum. Sloes have shorter stems and hug the branches more.

Steve pointed out (see comments) that sloes can be confused with Deadly Nightshade – you can see some photos Deadly Nightshade photos here.

 Wild plums taste like domestic plums (from sharp Mirabelles to sweet Victorias). Wild bullaces taste like greengages. Wild damsons are very sharp and sloes taste almost bitter.

Photo: Wild plums and bullace

Of course the best pocket guide to hedgerow foraging is Richard Maybe’s Food for Free (Collins GEM). It’s now on offer on Amazon for under £3.00.

Photo: Crabapple jelly and crabapple cheese

I only discovered how delicious fruit cheeses are a few years ago. Until then I had rejected them out of hand – using the left over pulp from jelly making seemed skinflint behaviour to me. And anyway would this pulp have any flavour at all?

I didn’t even bother to taste the pulp when jelly making which was a big mistake as I missed out on this treat. Fruit cheese can be sliced and served with starters, chops, roasts, cheese and even with fruit desserts.

Crabapples, particularly when they first start to ripen often produce very little juice. But the jelly making process leaves a lot of pulp. By turning this into cheese you are using all of your foraged bounty (crabapples are not generally for sale in the shops as they aren’t grown commercially in the UK).

I’ve deliberately used a small amount of crabapples in this recipe as the less that you use dramatically effects time that it takes to make the cheese. Our quince cheese recipe (Membrillo) can take several hours to thicken.

I took a tip from Sarah who left a comment on our hot crabapple chilli jelly recipe and added some chopped dried chillies just before potting. Excellent. Thank you Sarah.

This recipe made just over a pound of jelly and four small straight sided jars of cheese.

Hot crab apple and chilli cheese recipe
Ingredients:
• 600g of crab apples washed and chopped
• 35g of medium red chilli peppers, washed and chopped with seeds in
• 1 litre of water
• White granulated sugar 320g to each 400ml of pulp
• 2-3 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
• 2-3 small chopped dried Bird’s Eye chillies to be added at the end just before potting up

Method:
1. Put the chopped crab apples and chillies in a large heavy bottomed saucepan.
2. Add 1 litre of water (they should just be floating). Bring to the boil and simmer very gently (lid on) until the crab apples soften and become pulpy. This took about 45 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice.
3. Strain through a muslin square or jelly bag overnight.
4. Retain the juice for hot crabapple jelly – our recipe is here.

5. Strain the pulp through a sieve
6. Add the pulp to a large heavy bottomed pan and add the sugar. Bring very slowly to the boil, stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar.
7. When the sugar is dissolved simmer gently stirring every now and then until the pulp thickens. This took me about twenty minutes as I was using a large pan, it would take more time in a smaller pan. Watch the sides of the saucepan, when you notice the pulp thickening on the sides the cheese is ready.
8. Dollop into well greased (I used olive oil) warm sterilised flat sided jars. Fit cellophane tops or lids and leave to cool.

Photo: Plum tree

Anyone who owns Oded Schwartz’s superb book Preserving  is very lucky indeed. Published in 1996 it is now sadly out of print. Danny found a copy on Australian Ebay for me one Christmas and I’ve used it endlessly since then. It is packed full of mouth watering photographs and inspirational recipes. Last week I spotted that he adds tamarind to a plum chutney, as this is one of my favourite ingredients at the moment my mind began to whir. How about developing a chutney that just contains fruit rather than a combination of onions and fruit.  

So when Danny returned home with a 500g box of organic grapes that he had bought for fifty pence and I spotted that we had ripe plums in the garden I decided to have a go. The overall flavour is rich and tangy. Perfect with curry or cold meat or stirred into a game casserole.

As with all my chutneys, the secret is in the long cooking time which allows the flavours to mellow and develop and reduces the need for maturing in the jar. This chutney can be eaten immediately but will improve with keeping.

Plum and Tamarind Chutney Recipe

• 3lbs/1350g wild plums/damsons/eating plums
• 1lb/450g of seedless grapes 
• I lemon quartered lenthways and sliced fine
• 10.5 ozs/300g dried apricots (chopped at least into eight)
• 7 ozs/200g dried sultanas
• Half lb-1lb/225g-450g of soft brown sugar, depending on how sweet your wild plums/damsons/eating plums are.
• 4.4ozs/125g of tamaring block (soaked for 20 minutes in a mug of boiling water then seive and reject the seeds). I added the tamarind infused water to the chutney too. You can used two tablespoons of tamarind paste as an alternative.
• 2″ stick of cinnamon
• 2 large cloves of garlic chopped fine
• Half tsp of cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp of allspice powder
• 1 tsp of allspice berries
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1and a half pints/750 ml of white wine vinegar
• 3 small hot birdseye chillies (seeds removed) Chopped fine
• 2 tsp of balsamic vinegar
• 5 juniper berries
• 15 black peppercorns
• 2 heaped teaspoons of yellow mustard seed

Method:

1. Stone the plums and if big enough cut into slices.
2. Place all ingredients in a large heavy bottomed (non reactive) saucepan and bring slowly to a gentle boil. Turn the heat down immediately and simmer very gently (tiny bubbles just breaking the surface on the lowest heat) for at least five hours until the mixture has broken down and thickend.
3. Stir from time to time and more towards the end. If your simmering point is higher than ours, your chutney will be ready sooner. Take a peek every half hour or so. The chutney will thicken as it cools.
4. When ready pour into sterilised jars and cover with plastic lined metal lids.

Photo: Bottled cherry plums

I’m getting to the end of my third week being in bed. Finally last week my doctor discovered that I have a problem with my kidneys. I was beginning to wonder whether I’d just fade away like one of Dicken’s heroines.

So now we are waiting for more test results. Meanwhile I languish in the big spare room bed feeling lousy. I get up for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I’ve been out on two mini foraging trips to harvest wild plums and have bottled (canned) six kilos to eat in the winter months. I’ve also been harvesting the chubby wild blackberries that grow in our garden for wine and bottling with sliced apples. Gentle satisfying exercise.

We usually make jam, jelly and chutney with the wild cherry plums but this year I wanted to try bottling this fruit. When I was a child my mum bottled a lot of fruit (freezers were rare in those days) and I loved looking at the jars lined up on the larder shelves. Comfortable, squat, their fruit suspended in the coloured syrup.

There’s lots of good advice about bottling on the internet. I found the allotment.org.uk site very useful. In the end I rang my mum and she looked up her old method in her ancient Ideal Gas cookery book. Here are the instructions for bottling plums.

• Make a syrup of anything between 4ozs (113g) to a pound (454g) of white sugar to one pint (568ml) of water. My mum tipped to use the minimum sugar as too much can make the syrup taste sickly.
• Sterilise jars, rings and caps. Always use new rubber seals.
• Wash fruit and discard any bad or bruised  fruit.
• Set the oven to Gas Mark ½ (120°C, 250°F).
• Pack the jars very tightly with the plumbs pushing them firmly down.
• Put several sheets of newspaper into a deep baking tray (to absorb any liquid that bubbles over)
• Place the jars two inches apart on the baking tray. Fill to the makers mark (about an inch below the rim) with boiling syrup. Lids on very loosely (not tightened or clipped shut).
• Bake in the centre of the oven for 45 minutes. (Times change depending on the fruit used).
• Remove the baking tray and seal the topsof the jars firmly using a thick oven cloth.
• Leave for 24 hours before testing the seals.

Photo: walnuts infusing in vinegar

Last year I was a bit late picking walnuts for The Grand Pickled Walnut Challenge. Not wanting to waste the nuts that were clearly far too hard to pickle, I flexed my muscles and cut a few in half. I added these to some white wine vinegar, popped the experiment onto a shelf in the barn and forgot all about it.

About a month ago I was searching the shelves for empty vodka and gin bottles to make raspberry liqueur. My hand slipped and the bottle of walnut vinegar smashed on the ground. I managed to wipe a drop onto my forefinger as the vinegar soaked away. It was delicious. The walnuts had softened the edge of the vinegar. This would have been perfect for a salad without oil.

I’d planned to remove the walnuts after six months but they had been infusing the vinegar for nearly a year.

Last Saturday I went walnut picking on this beautiful estate. I had planned to go back at the end of June but when I arrived two weeks later, my friend’s face flickered.
“You might be too late.”

We tested the walnuts. A darning needle speared into the pointed end furthest from the branch indicated that I was probably just in time. So we picked, gossiped, laughed and filled a chubby carrier bag.

This afternoon I woke from a deep sleep and remembered that the green walnuts had been hanging in the kitchen for a week.
“I wonder if they know that they have been harvested and are waiting in suspended animation? Or have they been maturing for the week?”

After supper I crept downstairs and tested them. 22 were pretty hard the rest went into a saline solution. I halved the hard nuts. I divided them between three 750g, warm, sterilised passata bottles. I topped these up with 1500 ml of good white wine vinegar. I’ll test after six months but the sultry flavour of the vinegar matured for a year still lingers.

If you’re too late for pickled walnuts this year you might like to try making walnut vinegar. It’s easy, delicious and just takes minutes to make.

This year I was determined to make crab apple and chilli jelly. My first attempt was so so. There was a chilli tingle when I tasted the juice. I chucked it away. My recipe from Oded Schwartz’s Preserving added 3-4 medium heat chillis. Are these desseded? I’d used three desseded ones. A long foray on the Internet offered no clues. Chop and add your chillis seemed to be the line. So when I simmered my crab apples and chillies a couple of days ago, I left the seeds in. The result was a tasty juice with just the sort of kick I wanted. Hot but not hellish.

Hot crab apple and chilli jelly recipe

Ingredients:

• 600g of crab apples washed and chopped
• 35g of medium red chilli peppers, washed and chopped with seeds in
• 1 litre of water
• White granulated sugar 500g to each 500ml of juice

Method:

1. Put the chopped crab apples and chillies in a large heavy bottomed saucepan.
2. Add 1 litre of water (they should just be floating). Bring tp the boil and simmer until the crab apples soften and become pulpy (lid on). This took about 45 minutes.
3. Strain through a muslin square or jelly bag overnight. (Retain the pulp to make hot crab apple and chilli cheese)
4. Add the juice to a large heavy bottomed pan and add the sugar. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the juice and sugar has come to the boil remove from the heat and skim well. Return to the heat and bring to a rolling boil until setting point is reached. This took 15 minutes.
5. Skim and pour into warm sterilised jars. Oded Schwartz adds a chilli (stalk removed and split once lengthwise) as the jelly is setting. I really wanted to set chillies in the jelly but be warned this is a nightmare. The jelly needs to be setting firmly otherwise the chillies gently float to the surface again, and again and again. I made two jars with chillies and abandoned the rest.
6. Update: Following Sarah’s tip (see comments),I added two firey dried chopped chillies to the jelly. Marvellous.

“What exactly do you mean?” I was intrigued.
“Well it’s an old English tale, really. The saying is that the Devil was kicked out of heaven on October 11th. He landed on a blackberry bush. It must have hurt as each year he takes his revenge by spoiling blackberries after the 11th. Some say he spits on them, others that he pees on them.”
She gave me a sharp, clear eyed look.
“What ever he does to them, you’ll find that they taste thin after this date.”

Mrs Houlton was a wise old soul and I blindly followed her advice. She helped my mother in the house. Small and energetic she was intelligent and kind. We eventually moved away and a few years later her daughter drove her up to see us in Oxford. As the car drew away Mrs Houlton filled the back window of the car, smiling and waving goodbye. I sensed that I wouldn’t see her again. She died a few weeks later.

Thinking about it now, October 11th is a pretty good point to stop picking blackberries. They are best picked at the end of a warm sunny day. Often we have had the first touch of frost in the UK by this date and a frosted blackberry has a watery taste. Although the weather forecast for the rest of the week looks mild I am going to take a small break each day to harvest the second flush of blackberries in the garden and remember an old friend.