Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial

It's only 3pm and I'm sipping a whiskey with Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial. All in the name of research you understand. Pity we didn't have any limes because a twist would've made it perfect.

Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial.

I'm calling the yellow bullace Mirabelles for this recipe as it sounds posher. I took about 2 or 3 kilos (didn't weigh them first) and simmered them in about half a pint of water til they were soft, bashing them up with a wooden spoon and a potato masher along the way to help the juice come out. Once they were cooked I strained them through a muslin lined sieve until the juice had dripped through. For every litre of juice I added 700g light brown sugar plus a tablespoon of ground ginger. I then warmed it through til the sugar dissolved.

And here the ginger problem began. It was the devil's own job to get rid of little clumps of ground ginger which dispersed grittily through the cordial, giving an unpleasantly strong gingery hit if you got one in your mouth. I whisked it which helped with the bigger lumps but made no difference to the smaller ones, in the end I strained it through a tea strainer while bottling up. Next time I may try fresh ginger juice instead although any tips on dealing with ground ginger would be gratefully received.

The children aren't madly impressed with this one but I remember hating ginger beer when I was Willow's age and this cordial leaves a definite lingering warmth on the tongue. It's not got the impressive glowing colour of it's companion, cherry plum cordial, having a rather more sludgy appearance (am I selling it?!) instead. Personally I really like it's sweet/sharp toffee edged flavour which makes me think of Christmas.

As aforementioned, I decided to mix up some cordial with whiskey, just for research to see if it worked and enable me to report accurately on the blog. Honest. As I say, a twist of lime seems to be missing but other than that it's a lovely drink. Feels like it should cure ailments at 10 paces. I'm sure other dark spirits would work well too, or as a syrup over vanilla ice cream.

The 2011 Foraging Season kicks off.

One advantage of the children getting a little older is that they can be put to work in the foraging season - here's Xanthe hard at it in the kitchen.

On Saturday we went out on our annual cherry plum harvest, I know everyone else seems to have been picking them for weeks already, but our usual spot is in the shady side of a very tall hedge and they seem to ripen later. For a change it was a gloriously sunny day (most previous trips to this location have involved wellies and pack a macs), the children decided to scamper off into the 'hedge' which is actually a narrow strip of woodland running along the back of the Diss Rugby club ground, but Adam summoned them back to pull their weight in the fruit harvest.

We've refined our technique after last year's marathon bullace harvest and went for a 'shake the tree' method rather than the 'selective use of the apple picker' method. Adam extended the apple picker to it's full length, wedged it onto a branch and shook like mad. The resulting monsoon of cherry plums and yellow bullace sent the girls into shrieking paroxms of delight - at least until Xanthe was hit squarely in the eye by a large cherry plum. After that we stood well back while the fruit bounced down on Adam's head.

Once the road was carpeted with fruit, the children were required to help, we all rushed around around frantically picking them up before any cars came along. It's a teeny tiny single track country road so cars aren't frequent, I think we only saw 3, but they do seem to come along just at the wrong moment and squash the maximum number of plums. We also had our annual "yes you can eat them" conversation with passing walkers who never seem quite convinced and refuse our offers to try one.

Yesterday I made our household favourite, Cherry Plum Cordial (made 4 bottles, one half used already) and today I'm going to try and amalgamate my Cherry Plum Chutney recipe with myPlum Ketchup recipe which should be an interesting experiment. I'm hoping it turns out a bit like HP sauce.

We picked 3 kilos of cherry plums and 4 of yellow bullace but I don't think it's enough! We're on holiday next week but I'm hoping to pick some more at the weekend and stash them in the freezer for processing when we get home.

Drink your own Garden!

Just a brief post to admire the colour of the Yellow Bullace wine Adam made last year, although it's not as beautiful as I remember thinking it was after drinking half a glass last night. It's really not bad for home brew especially considering Adam's 'chuck it in the bucket and see what happens' approach to winemaking.

I'm consulting the splendidly named charity shop find 'Drink your own Garden' for further wine making ideas although it talks about stuff like Camden tablets (for attracting Goths?) and wine nutrient. We've only ever bought sugar and yeast to add to the wild fruit/nettles/elderflowers we use and haven't died yet, although I am a bit reluctant to drink last year's batch of cider as it's a bit too sweet.

I'm not sure I'd want to drink our garden anyway what with all the chicken poo, I'm thinking I may drink the hedgerow though. Elderberry and blackberry wine for Autumn evenings 2012 I think.

Spot the Difference?

Pop Quiz - what have I picked?? On the left are some damsons I picked a few days ago, they're very ripe and sweet and a deep purple colour. At the bottom are a few purple bullace I picked. They look almost identical but the taste couldn't be more different. It's beyond sharp, I would defy anyone to taste these without a major physical reaction including face scrunching, foot stamping and immediate demands for water as they seem to leech every drop of moisture from your mouth.

The fruit on the top right now look the same as the others but when I saw them on the hedge they were bright blue, covered in a pale blue bloom which makes them look like giant sloes. When tasted they were sharper than the first damsons I picked but not in the same league as the bullace so they're obviously just slightly less ripe than the first batch.

Now, shall I throw sloes into the confusion? Some purple bullace are quite small and very easily confused with sloes (see the excellent sloe.biz site for a more detailed discussion) but there is a foolproof way to tell the difference. Sloes grow on the Blackthorn tree, the clue's in the name, if you can pick them without getting scratched they're bullace, if your flesh is ripped to shreds on vicious thorns, they're sloes.

It can be really tricky to identify wild plums as many of them are inter-related. According to Richard Mabey's seminal work 'Food for Free' damsons were bred from bullace so the two fruits can be indistinguishable. While I'm on the subject of Richard Mabey, he lives near Diss, I saw him in our Morrisons once. Felt inexplicably cheated, shouldn't he be out foraging ducks off the Waveney or something? His book also ignores Cherry plums and yellow bullace (far sweeter than the purple kind) and I really don't know why.

To muddy the waters further, there are cultivated varieties of plums which escape from gardens. I know where a wild plum tree grows whose fruit is delicious but I haven't got a clue what type they are. They're larger than damsons but don't have their characteristic blue bloom and aren't as large as something like a Victoria plum so goodness knows what they are.

Which begs the ultimate question - if they taste good, does it matter?

Edit - I'm just updating this post with a couple of extra pointers in distinguishing sloes and purples bullace. I'm noticing bullace are ripening much earlier than sloes, I'm writing this edit at the beginning of September and bullace are dropping from the trees and even beginning to wither already. Sloes traditionally aren't ripe til after the first frost.

Also, I've noticed insects burrowing into bullace whereas this doesn't really happen with sloes as they're not sweet enough. Tell tale signs of maggots include crystalised drops of juice (if you look closely enough you'll see it comes from a tiny hole) and little piles of tiny brown grains (maggot poo - ugh) on the outside of the fruit.

Yellow Bullace Jam.

Just look at the colour, isn't it magnificent? That's something of a relief as the fruit looked suspiciously dark once it had defrosted. It's got a very sharp, tangy flavour which I really like in a jam and also makes it useful from a culinary point of view. Warmed and mixed with a bit of white wine vinegar, garlic and chilli it would make a lovely, Chinese style, pouring sauce for tuna or pork.

Anyhoo, the recipe:

2 kilos yellow bullace
2.5 kilos sugar
water.

Put the bullace (with stones) into a large pan and add some water to stop them sticking. As my fruit were frozen they gave out their juice readily and didn't need much water, if you're using fresh, keep a close eye at this stage, adding more if needed to keep the fruit at a runny consistency.

When the fruit has collapsed, take the pan off the heat and skim off the stones. I used a slotted spoon, put the stones into a sieve and rubbed them around the sieve to release any juice or flesh still clinging to them.

Add the sugar and stir til dissolved, then boil steadily til setting point is reached. Spoon into hot jars and seal. Makes about 10 jars.

Top Foraging Day.

We're loving the cherry plums so much we couldn't resist going out and picking another haul before our holiday on Saturday. Adam's off work so he came too and the four of us trundled off to a new hedgerow I'd spotted when out running the other day. The only problem was the plums were growing really high up as the hedge is regularly trimmed to a height of about 6' to maintain visibility for passing traffic. Luckily we had brought one of these (mine was much cheaper) known to us by it's technical name 'the grabby thing'. So Adam poked around with it, showered us with earwigs, and managed to successfully dislodge the plums in the upper reaches of the branches.

We hadn't been there long when the heavens opened, luckily we'd all brought waterproofs and the kids were in their wellies so they occupied themselves with puddle jumping while Adam and I toiled. We piqued the interest of a herd of cows in the next field who ambled over and lined up along the hedge to watch us in bemusement.

We got a satisfyingly bulgy bag of cherry plums and then spotted a yellow bullace a bit further along. In total I think we've got another 5 kilos of fruit. As much as I love foraging, it is a bit depressing as the resulting glut of fruit dwarfs the puny harvest from my veg garden. The handful of tumbling toms sitting in the fridge I was so proud of this morning is looking rather paltry now! Roll on allotment time.