Nettles don’t immediately spring to mind when thinking of this time of year and the bounty the season offers.
Tender milk fed lamb, wild garlic or the first crisp spears of asparagus, perhaps, but nettles? They’re certainly not at the top of many people’s spring essentials lists, or the bottom, come to think of it. Read More…
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but a near constant stream of things seems to have got in the way including a minor run in with a large bus (funnily enough, the car came off worse) and a couple of days spent down on various farms chatting with pig breeders and turkey farmers, amongst others (full reports to follow shortly, I promise).
As a means of preservation, fruit leathers are an ancient art and were traditionally used as a means of transforming a summer glut into something that could be eaten throughout the year. It is a method that almost certainly goes back to the Palaeolithic and is still used by hunter-gatherer societies today.
Throughout September and into October, the fruit of the Hawthorn tree (haws – no sniggering at the back please) is in wanton abundance throughout the English countryside. I was inspired to have a crack at making a ‘haw leather’ (tee hee) by a wonderful post by Nick Weston on his equally wonderful blog Hunter-Gatherer Cook.
I’d seen the small red fruits burst from the branches of the Hawthorn trees that scatter the open land around our house but was wary of the berries themselves. I knew they were edible but having cautiously nibbled on a few raw ones, I wasn’t overly impressed by their rather dull taste and disproportionately large stone. They were far too much hassle to be of any use, surely?
Turns out, unsurprisingly, that I was wrong.
So, armed with my trusty Thai tote bag and an iPod for company, I went foraging in the chill warmth of an early autumn afternoon. Half an hour’s picking yielded at least a kilo of berries, more than enough for a first attempt at making a haw jelly, or leather.
The first step is to transform these little berries into a gloopy mush. I used a large bowl and pestle (or mortar, I never know which is which) and then proceeded to break the bowl thanks to overly vigorous pounding. Thankfully by that point it was time adopt a more hands on approach and so after transferring the mixture, rolling up my sleeves and adding a little water to the now brown sludge, I squeezed and mashed the thick gloop with my fingers. A little more water and a little more mixing and the required consistency was reached without too much effort or any more broken bowls.
Instead of merely forcing the mashed fruit through a sieve – to separate out the stones and bits of twig et cetera – and leaving it to set, I decided to freestyle a little by adding a little apple juice, sugar and cinnamon and heating it gently in the hope that a softer and sweeter taste would emerge.
Being staggeringly high in pectin, haw ‘jelly’ will set without the addition of any sugar or any form of boiling. Within minutes you will notice the mixture thickening and taking on a far more solid feel. After an hour or so you should be able to slice the resultant cake.
After warming the jelly over a gentle heat and adding the extra ingredients, the colour and texture became increasingly fudge-like and the slight bitterness softened thanks to the addition of sweet apple juice and a little sugar.
Once cool, the jelly was sliced thinly and dried out in a low oven overnight to remove the water and give the leathers a near endless lifespan. Traditionally fruit like this would have been dried out in the sun and then offered essential nutrition throughout the winter months when fresh fruits were in stark supply. Things aren’t quite that bad for us, but small pieces of the haw leather stirred into warm porridge should be a tasty treat come the colder months.
Having raided the hedgerows, stripped the trees, harvested the vegetable patch and bought the necessary extras from the shops, we set down to transforming the vast array of fruit and vegetables in front of us into a selection of, hopefully, delicious preserves.
There’s something homely and warming, almost antiquated, about making chutneys and jellies, jams and alcoholic drinks. Although it was warm outside and only the merest hint of autumn was present, I had images of dark afternoons and crackling fires in the grate. In my head I was already enjoying the fruits of our labour as the snow came down outside in a soft translucent sheet. Sipping on sloe vodka and munching chunks of cheddar topped with tangy pickle whilst listening to the wind race through the gaps in our ancient front door.
But those times are far off and there was work to be done to before we could realise them rather than just visualise them.
Naturally, we started with the vodka. Making sloe gin, or vodka, is a simple process that takes no more than a few minutes once you have gone to the trouble of picking the berries themselves and stabbing each one with a pin three or four times (which is a real pain in the arse). These little round fruits look similar to blueberries but have an astringency that renders them almost inedible on their own. Although they can be made into a jelly, they really come into their own when turned into a sweet alcoholic drink.
Simply add them to a spirit of your choice with a load of sugar, give it a mix and leave it for about six months, giving it an occasional shake. After the allotted time, strain off the berries and bottle the purple liquor. It should taste pretty good by this point, but will get even better if you can hold off for another half a year. This really is sloe food.
Next up were the elderberries. The white flowers of the elder, so redolent of summer, quickly disappear only to be replaced with hundreds of tiny purple berries. These can be harvested and boiled up with a little water and, again, plenty of sugar. Once strained through muslin and heated to the correct temperature (about 110 degrees), a delicious jelly is the result. Hopefully we’ve made enough to see us through to next autumn, a great accompaniment to a multitude of warming winter dinners from roasts to stews.
For the chutney we turned to the many courgettes that our plants have provided us with over the summer. After roasting them, stuffing them, frying them, braising them and turning them into soup we were a little ‘courgetted out’ so decided to preserve the remainder. Even the most diligent gardener will miss a couple of these fast-growing fruits and large marrows are the inevitable end point and we had a few of these overgrown fellas just waiting to be chopped up and gently cooked with onions, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and plenty of spices.
Our largest pan proved to be a little too small to take the huge quantity of ingredients that we wanted to turn into jars of homemade chutney so we ended up buying a new cauldron sized pan perfect for making preserves and stocks.
Once all the fresh items had been chopped up, in they went to be cooked gently for three or four hours until the whole lot had reduced down and changed colour to a deep dark brown, a rich and sticky chutney, the smell of which warmed the soul and brought to mind those rich images of crackling log fires and cold winter evenings. I couldn’t wait to try it with a chunk of cheese, so I didn’t and spooned a little onto a slice of cheddar whilst it was still warm. Simple pleasures truly are the best.
For the rural dwelling wild food fan, early autumn is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the year. With a profoundly disappointing summer (how I despise living up to the stereotype of an Englishman talking about the weather but it is relevant, and, according to anthropologists, performs an important social function but we’ll ignore that for the moment) the leaves have turned earlier and the hedgerows are positively aching under the weight of countless blackberries, the branches of apple trees bow thanks to the sheer number of fruit and the white flowers of the elder have turned into full clusters of tiny, deep purple berries. There is a banquet just waiting to be collected.
And so that’s exactly what we did.
The countryside that surrounds our house is vast and empty with numerous pathways and hedgerows crossing the fields from which to gather this wonderful bounty free of charge. We went out a couple of weeks ago armed with no more than a couple of bags and a keen eye and came back laden with tasty goodies.
Even though it was early and many of the blackberries on the brambles were little more than tightly packed red nuggets, there were a good number that were fully ripe, deep in colour and delightfully sweet. By the time we’d half filled a bag, my fingers (and lips) were stained with a familiar purple that beautifully illustrates the season.
The fruit of the blackthorn, also known as sloes, was also ripe and ready to be picked over to make a batch of sloe vodka. The hidden thorns can be a pain and I regretted not packing any gloves but the haul was worth getting scratched for, certainly enough to make a litre, or so, of sweet and leg-wobblyingly strong vodka that should be ready by this time next year.
We also came across two walnut trees whose fruit, the same colour as the leaves, was hidden within the thick canopy above us. It was hard work and involved a great deal of jumping and grabbing of branches but we ended up with two or three kilos of unripe walnuts (that bare no resemblance to the wrinkled little brains that they become once they’ve been cracked) to pickle, providing the shells haven’t begun to form.
Finally, we couldn’t pass up the thousands of elderberries that seemed to be covering every other tree along our route. By the time we returned home we had an entire bag full of bunches of these tiny little berries.
The plan was to transform this haul of fresh, seasonal produce, along with the glut of courgettes from the garden, into a series of jams, pickles, jellies, alcoholic drinks and chutneys, so after a trip to the supermarket to buy the necessary items we set to work…
To be perfectly honest, it would be a lie for me to say that we are feeling the pinch. This is the first time either of us have had to worry properly about things like bills, food shopping, mortgage payments and the price of oil so we have no point of reference. Having just bought a house and under no illusions as to the amount of money I could make from writing, we were prepared for some serious belt tightening, credit crunch or no credit crunch. For all we know it would have been this way even if the world’s economy were still sitting prettily atop the crest of a tempestuous wave of credit.
In addition to this, neither of us has ever been particularly extravagant. Aside from having to curb an enthusiastic album buying habit which took hold with a disturbing voracity towards the end of last year, I’ve not really noticed any major upheavals.
In fact, there have been a few of unexpected bonuses – we eat healthier food (less meat, for a start), we drink less alcohol, we can read the hundreds of books that sit as yet unread on our bookshelf and we can power through a series of great DVD box sets that were bought frivolously some months ago and remain unwatched.
On the food front, things got even more interesting with the arrival of a pocket-sized book called ‘Food for Free’ by Richard Mabey. This wonderful little tome, originally published in 1972 offers a wealth of information on over 100 edible plants, berries, fungi, seaweed and shellfish that can be found in the British Isles.
Eager to try out our new guide, improve our foraging skills and attempt to eat for nothing we headed out last night for a walk; gloves, scissors and bags in hand ready to be filled with nature’s finest bounty. Or at least that was the plan.
Things began well when we came across an abundance of low-lying nettles, still a long way off flowering therefore still perfectly viable eating. I gathered half a bagful with the intention to make a nettle soup. We moved on and almost immediately saw a long line of elders complete with bunches and bunches of their recognisable tiny white flowers. I turned to page 66 in my little pocket book.
‘Elderflowers can be munched straight off the branch on a hot summer’s day, and taste as frothy as a glass of ice cream soda.’
Woah, this was good news. I love ice cream soda and I was starting to get a little parched from all that walking. What better way to slake my thirst than with some fresh elderflower? I snipped off a small cluster, took a tentative sniff and bit off a sizeable clump.
After a brief chew my mouth was awash with a bitterly unpleasant taste. I realised that I had been drastically mis-informed as to the deliciousness of raw elderflowers and my girlfriend failed to stifle a hearty giggle as I spat and attempted to clean my tongue with the back of my hand. After a few moments there was a mildly discernable hint of the taste I recognise as elderflower, but it certainly didn’t have the frothiness of a glass of ice cream soda. This Mabey chap should have his tongue looked at.
There was a flurry of excitement further down the track as we identified what we thought was chamomile and then sorrel. Sadly our woodland powers aren’t quite strong enough yet and a little nibble suggested that neither was what we thought.
Still, we had gathered enough nettles for a hearty and healthy soup and a bagful of flowers – enough to make a decent quantity of elderflower cordial or maybe even wine. And none of it had cost us a penny. Satisfaction indeed.
I knew that there was a vast, epic, sprawling world of difference between a nicely pre-packaged pheasant neatly presented in a butcher’s window and the actual real-life bird, but I did not appreciate the actual feathered physical reality of it until very recently. After contemplating the task I was about to undertake I steadied myself with a large glass of wine before reaching for my instruction manual – an excellent book originally released in the early 1960’s by an unwittingly hilarious fellow called W.M.W. Fowler. ‘Countryman’s Cooking’ is not just a superb cookbook but also an excellent read that harks back to a gentler age when the raging inferno of feminism was but a gentle glimmer and it was possible to write witticisms such as ‘having fortified your pasty maker with a couple of stiff gins, let her loose with some flour, lard, a bowl and a rolling pin’ without fear of scathing repercussions.
Aside from such occasional, accidental and innocently archaic interludes, the book also has passages that are eerily prescient today with some prophetic ideas about the potential damage of intensive farming and the declining popularity of wild food, such as rabbit. But that was for another day: my immediate concern was where to begin with my pheasant, a bird Willie Fowler held in such high esteem that he devoted the entire first chapter to it.
My mind, beginning to feel the numbing effects of alcohol, was developing a genteel confidence – immediately shattered on reading the words ‘the pheasant is the most tedious of all birds to pluck’. I let out an audible sigh, reached again for the wine and carried on reading. ‘Holding the bird in the left hand begin plucking at the back of the neck about three inches above the shoulders and pull the feathers out one at a time.’
Although the evening was growing cold, this was not a job for the kitchen and so it was to the garden where, bird in left hand, I cautiously grasped a single feather and pulled. And nothing happened. So I pulled again a little harder this time and still failed to remove the tenacious little thing. My third attempt could have wrenched Excalibur from the stone and sure enough after offering brief resistance, the feather popped neatly out of the bird’s skin between my fingers. One down, a mere thousand, or so, to go. I made myself comfortable and carried on, stopping only occasionally to imbibe more wine.
After half an hour I stopped to assess the progress I hadn’t made and found myself nodding in agreement with old Willie – this surely was a tedious process. My girlfriend emerged from the kitchen and looked at me sympathetically, and then at the growing pile of feathers between my feet which were making their way across the lawn at the merest hint of a breeze. ‘Do you think you should pluck into a bag?’ she asked. I nodded humbly by way of agreement and attempted apology.
After another ten minutes of plucking (into a bag) my patience began to wane and, having exposed enough of the breast, I picked a sharp knife from the kitchen and began to skin it instead. This proved a much faster and infinitely more satisfying approach and before long the bird was bereft of both feathers and skin apart from a small, shit-covered, clump around the parson’s nose which I was less keen on removing. This, I assumed, was what my guide euphemistically named the ‘vent’ and was where the gutting would begin, a process I wished to put off for as long as possible.
The head and neck were removed with ease using a pair of scissors and I was left looking for the crop, a ‘bag made of thin membrane situated at the base of the throat.’ It was then pointed out that that I should ‘try not to break it and you will save yourself the trouble of clearing up the resulting mess.’ Had I read down the paragraph a little earlier I would probably have taken more care not to puncture this small bag full of partially digested food that let off a deeply foul stench as it seeped over my fingers but I paid the price for my eagerness. After a few deep breaths and a healthy glug of wine I managed to fight back the rising tide of vomit that was gradually making its way up from my stomach thanks to the smell of rotting organic matter that was residing within the crop and was readying myself for the gutting.
My new best friend, Willie Fowler, devotes just two sentences to the evisceration procedure: ‘make a longitudinal cut from just below the breastbone to the vent. Insert the first and second fingers of the right hand and hook out the insides’, and I am sure that to the hardened countryman this is a simple process akin to putting on a tweed cap and wax jacket. But to a wet-behind-the-ears fledgling as myself this was not the easiest of matters to attend to. It required a firm hand and significant mental fortitude, neither of which I possess at the best of times, let alone a bottle of Rioja down.
Under the guiding light of a torch held by my intrigued and attentive partner, I made the cut and peered into the belly of the beast trying to see a way in. there wasn’t one so I just rolled up the sleeve of my jacket and followed the simple instructions that had been lain out to me. In went the fingers and out flopped the guts, with little effort on my part. It was as if they were just waiting to make their escape. How such a small bird can have so many insides I’ll never know but there they were slopping into a plastic bag between my feet slowly leaching red onto their feathery bed.
And so it was over. I’d done it without squealing in horror or recoiling in fear or fainting or being sick quietly in the corner. Granted, my senses had been numbed by a significant quantity of wine but we now had in front of us an oven ready bird that just two hours previously (yes, it took that long) had been hanging in the garage complete with head, feathers and insides. I’d passed successfully through my own rite of passage, gone through a faintly traumatic liminal stage and emerged triumphant on the other side.
I highly recommend Countryman’s Cooking, an intelligent and thought provoking read, not to mention an excellent cookbook.
Click here to find out more about the book (Daily Telegraph article), or click here to purchase it (Amazon.co.uk)
I'm Alex Rushmer: writer, chef and Masterchef 2010 finalist. Welcome to my little corner of the Web. Why not get a cup of tea, snuggle down and make yourself at home?
