Ginger Tablet

Elderberry Cordial and Probable Sloe Gin and Other Lessons I Have Learned

 

1. Spiders really like to live on elderberry clusters. But they can be easily removed from your harvest by just throwing them and their sprig right out the window. Of course they'll survive the fall. Plus this way, you may have elders in your garden next year.

2. Maneuvering litres of hot boiled elderberry juice is a tricky activity. If you need to strain it from one massive pot to another container wait until you have a friend around who can offer a hand or yell at you when you start to spill. I did this alone. I am still finding purple drops on many surfaces of my kitchen.

3. It is difficult to know exactly what to do with four litres of elderberry cordial(made by reducing the boiled juice with 2 kilos of sugar and flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg). Possibly pour it on ice cream, use it to poach pears, add a splash to white wine or a glug to mulled wine. Definitely add it to cloudy apple juice. Not only will it make the drink purple, it will make it taste just like pressed apple cider. If you live in a place where this is commonly purchased, then that's wonderful for you. If you live in Scotland, then this is your ticket. This is what my past four autumns have been missing. Probably nice warm as well.

4. Sloes grow on the banks of Loch Lomond, close to campsites!

5. If you buy 4 litres of gin and a bag of sugar on a Tuesday morning when you're off work, the cashier will not bat a single lash. Glasgow is brilliant.

6. Sloes are not the only fruit.After you freeze the sloes overnight and then spend a hour or so pricking them and dropping them into gin and topping everything with about 500 grams of sugar. You may do some internet research that will convince you that you have instead picked plums. Tiny ones that look just like sloes. In fact, sloes are a kind of ancient plum and sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference. You can obsess about this for hours! In the end you can decide that wild plum gin doesn't sound too bad either. Meh.

 

7. "Sloe" gin changes colour over night! And glass demijohns are so cute.

8. The apple butter recipes that pop up first in a search do not yield anything like the stuff you grew up with. There should not be vinegar, so much sugar or any spices. Just a velvety, sugar assault. The vinegar taste doesn't go away; the sugar makes it jammy. You'll end up with 1.5 jars of disappointment.

9. If you wash out pickled onion jars and boil them for, like a good 15 minutes, and then wash them out again, they will still sort of smell like pickled onion. It imbues the glass. This does not improve the already vinegary and weird apple butter.

11. The Amish/Mennonites should have settled in Glasgow. There's no apple butter and I can't make it right and I wish I could just buy it. Plus *all* of the dolls here have faces.

10. Masterchef: The Professionals makes baked desserts very, very appealing.

11. Tarte Tatin is really hardly any more work at all that an apple crumble (the easiest dessert).  Given the amount of butter and sugar involved, this is a devastatingly dangerous realisation.

12. It might not be worth it to slow roast a pineapple with caramel and rum. It's pretty good, but possibly not better than regular pineapple served on ice cream with a bit of rum splashed on top. The debate rages.

13. If you are making a rum caramel for a slow roasted pineapple and after you pour the caramel over the fruit, you scrap the bottom of the pan with a spoon to get the very sticky golden bits, you end up with a rum-flavoured caramel pop, a delicious treat that's possibly better than the end result and that you do not need to advertise to your dining companions. It can be your little secret.

14. Pork and Lamb Shoulders!This has been one of the most valuable lessons I have learned this year. Tasty, tasty shoulder. Meat that loves you right back. The lamb can be thrown in a pot with an inexact amount of garlic, olive oil and rosemary. While it should feed you for days, it will be so delicious, you'll just kind of gorge yourself and there will be barely enough left for a snack. It is therefore another dangerous realisation. For the pork, you can make a spicy rub and slow cook it for three hours or so with a bit of water. You can then eat it in fajitas, throw it into pea soup, or make a vegetable gravy sauce, add the leftover meat as well as some sausages (just to feed your impromptu guests). Serve it on mashed potatoes with a side of cabbage with bacon. You will then not care that the days are alarmingly short and your winter coat is starting to seem like a sensible option. Whatever. Pigs and Lambs have shoulders. And you can eat them.

Samphire and Crab Linguine

We've spent the last two weekends running away, first to the east coast and then to the west, staying just one night each time, getting covered in sand and midgie bites and learning the peculiarities of our new tent. These were not culinary journeys, although there were some delicious moments. Like the roasted sausage and pepper sandwiches I made over the campfire with the help of my trusty stick. See the raw materials below:

Waking up far earlier than necessary the next morning, I went for a walk through my hangover and down the length of the estuary on the way to the beach. The tide was low, the river just skimming over the sand and trickling down to the sea, leaving a vast, flat, sandy moonscape stretched out until the grasses and dunes in the distance. It's the expanse behind the sausages in the picture above. You can't tell that the sea lies beyond, but it does, the brave among us swam in it later on. In the estuary, though, was the second delicious treat. The sole vegetation; colonies of micro cacti, hundreds of small samphire plants breaking up the endless sand. I grabbed a few sprigs on my way back to the tents. 

Samphire is often called sea asparagus, and I suppose that's apt in some ways. It's long and green, for example. But I belong to the tiny minority that finds asparagus terribly dull. So boring. It tastes like stringy grass unless it is thoroughly roasted with strong aromatics. Now and then I'll buy some out of an obscure sense of duty and add them to a risotto or pasta, but it's just wasted on me.

And that's absolutely fine as no one ever forces me to eat asparagus anymore. But I resent the association with samphire. They do not taste the same. First of all, samphire absorbs all of the salt in its environment, making it an already seasoned vegetable. A truly rare beast. As the levels of salinity are just shy of aggressive, you don't need very much in any dish. Also, it's a member of the succulent family. It's closer to aloe than asparagus. So it has a pleasantly satisfying cruchy/snapping/jelly texture.  And its flavour, underneath the saltiness, is subtly floral and alien, almost peppery. It's a green curiosity. Something that would be difficult to grow bored of and it makes asparagus seem pretty darn plain.

Samphire grows in exactly the kind of environment in which I found it; river beds near the sea. The best way to collect is by cutting a few sprigs off and leaving the base intact. You can eat it raw, or lightly cooked alongside of fish and seafood. It would probably be nice with eggs or in a seaweed salad as well. I can't imagine it would hold up to long cooking times, but perhaps I'm underestimating it. We had it first panfried with butter, a fat piece of salmon on top and mashed potatoes underneath. Next I made this pasta and it was delicious. How could roasted tomatoes, cream and crab not be? If you haven't been to the seaside recently, you could easily make it without the samphire. You could even throw some asparagus in if it was in season and you were a pedestrian sicko.

Roasted Tomato, Samphire and Crab Linguine

Given the amounts, this probably should feed 3-4, but we are greedy and it just fed two of us. 

Ingredients

• 1 kilo cherry tomatoes 
• garlic
• a handful of crab meat (I used a tin and it was just fine)
• another handful of chopped samphire (well rinsed)
• olive oil, salt and pepper
•  cream
• chopped parsley
• something spicy: pepper sauce, chili flakes
• linguine, enough for 2-3 people

Method

1.  Dump the cherry tomatoes on a roasting pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast on a high heat, as high as your oven will go, for about 20 minutes.
2. Once they are juicy and broken and just a little bit black, remove them from the oven and start boiling the water for your pasta. Cook the pasta following your normal procedures and rituals.
3. Dump the tomatoes in a pan with the garlic. Then add the crab meat and the samphire.
4. Pour in some cream. As much as you can get away with. Ok, not so much that it will dull the acidity of the tomatoes, but enough that it feels like a small luxury.
5. Add your spicy poison of choice and the parsley, toss with the drained pasta.

Forgotten Photo - Red Currants

 

These were picked on the one glorious day we had in July. M has a collection of fantastically overgrown fruit trees and bushes behind her flat. We walked along the river, sunbathed on the grass and then went back to hers to pick all the berries that the birds had neglected.

I brought my small tub home and mixed them with sugar, very, very thick cream and broken up digestive biscuits. We ate this out of small green glasses, filling them up again and again.

Aphid and Elderflower Donuts

It was only after I had put the blossoms into the cordial that I noticed the insects crawling all over the bag I had carried them home in. You're supposed to watch out for aphid infestations when you pick elderflowers and I thought I had been careful. Every time I reached for one of the white, expansive upturned heads of flowers I looked for inhabitants. I left a couple of colonized blooms alone. But nevertheless, I had brought dozens and dozens home with me and they were crawling all over the flowers that were meant for dessert.

I don't think they were aphids, actually. They were too skinny and cylindrical. I've always thought of aphids as quite jolly and affable insects. They've got big bellies and come in vibrant colours. Ants treat them like cattle as they secret something called "honeydew" from their anuses which the ants can't get enough of. They herd and protect them in exchange for a lick now and then. The critters investigating the inside of my carrier bag looked more like the hairs on a strawberry. Tiny, moving fibers.

It was all very well for the cordial; the blossoms had gone into a hot sugar syrup that I then topped up with some more boiling water.  The flowers and some cut up lemons, zest and juice were supposed to infuse the sugar water for 24 hours before being strained through cheesecloth and decanted. If the bugs didn't drown, they must have been scorched and their wee little bodies would just get strained out the next day anyway.

But I had a few choice blooms left and they were supposed to be made into fritters, fritters that were my only plans on that Saturday night. This is how I chose to spend my last Saturday night before moving in with J. Heaving loads of wet laundry into the dryer and onto racks, watching dodgy television and eating flower fritters. I had a more sociable agenda originally, but the chilling and insistent rain put me off. I had to pack, anyway. And get my head straight. And just be alone for a little while. Who knows when that will happen again.

Not that I'm worried about moving in with J, but clearly we are going to annoy each other sometimes. We'll have a spat about the dishes now and then. And he's going to discover loads of things about me that I've cleverly been able to hide up to this point. Like how my go-to meal on lazy rainy days is Campbell's mushroom soup with some cheddar stirred through coupled with hot buttered toast. It's what my mom used to make on Sunday afternoons, minus the toast, but I think that addition brings it closer to being a full meal. What if he can't get over my condensed soup addiction and I can't see past his Marmite enthusiasm?

I just needed a quiet night and a flower fritter or two. I decided not to let the bugs ruin this one for me. So I made a simple batter with some flour and water, heated some oil, got my powdered sugar ready in a sieve and shook the flowers to dislodge their guests (you're not supposed to wash them because that takes away their aromatic flavour). A quick dip into the batter (insects floating to the top), a drop into the oil where the blooms were splayed and browned and then a dousing of sugar. Fast into my mouth. Amazing. Another one and another one. Not even thinking about the bugs. Who cares? I made a little pile and ate them unobserved, watching the storm clouds from the window.

Can you see the metaphor churning up in the batter like a little dead bug? Do you think that these fritters offered me insight into the future? That although there will be things that I find mildly off-putting about the arrangement, there will also be surprises and generally things will just be warm and lovely. He's eventually going to discover that I only excrete honeydew and that will probably be a weird moment. But we'll just crunch through the flower fritter of life getting powdered sugar everywhere.

It would be dangerous to extend this metaphor much more. These fritters loose their heat quickly and with it their verve until they are cold and soggy. If you give in and eat too many, your stomach will feel terrible and leaden just like after any deep-fried dish.  Perhaps desserts do not make resilient metaphors for relationships.  Instead, you should just make some and just eat them. Don't think about the bugs, just crunch through the blooms.

Notes:

1) It is not really elderflower season anymore. Try and get some if you can, but it might be better to hold off and wait for elderberries instead. We can make jelly.

2) My cordial was not a success. I used a small amount of brown sugar and it really altered the taste. I'll try again next year.

3) Do you notice how bad my photos of fried food are? I take them too quickly because I just want to eat the stuff before it goes cold. I might give up. You'll just have to imagine crispy brown things in the future.  

4) This marks the beginning of my daily posts. Tune in tomorrow to see if I can keep this going.

Losing an Hour, Gaining Wild Garlic Breath

The morning when the clocks go forward is possibly my least favourite morning of the year. I wake up already an hour behind, those sixty minutes cruelly stolen. It makes no difference that I gain it again in the fall. I couldn't care less about the extra daylight that evening. At that moment I really feel that missing hour and all of the activities that could have filled it up. This evil, short day just dares me to try and get anything accomplished in 23 hours. Clearly impossible. Plus it always happens on a Sunday, the day of the week forever fraught with latent homework-related fears and other phantom anxieties.

After (a ridiculously late) breakfast Sunday morning, I flopped myself on my bed. J asked what I was going to do that day before our dinner plans later on in the evening.

K: I don't know. Nothing, I guess. I don't have time to do anything. I guess I should go into my studio.

J: That sounds like a good idea.

K: Except I don't have any good ideas for art anymore cause I'm stupid.

J: Oh, don't worry, I don't think the world actually has any new ideas to offer.

K: Maybe I'll go for a bike ride.

J: Sure. Where would you go?

K: I don't know. Around the parks. Maybe not. All the trails are stupid. (pout.pout.pout)

J: (casting an appraising glance around my less-than-tidy room): You could do laundry.

K: Stop trying to find activities for me.

J: Do you feel like your life is a bit pointless right now?

K: Yes! Everything is stupid and I never get anything done.

J: OK. Good. Well, I'm going home now. Let me know what time we're having dinner.

K: (Dives under the duvet. Pout. Pout. Pout)

The lack of an hour had triggered an existential crisis and my response to it was decidedly shallow. The train of thought went something like this:

"My life is currently stupid and I don't have any new projects that I find exciting and the books that I'm reading are fine but not exceptional. How can this be solved? Well, it can't be. Nothing will ever be exciting again. I ate all of my fantastic fruit compote and I miss it already and I want to eat it forever and ever. I'm dead without it. And I'm excited to wear my new shoes (thanks Mom!) to dinner tonight and it's really stupid that I have to wait seven hours to do that. I will never have another fulfilling activity again so I have to console myself with compote and shoes but I can't, so I'll just lie on my bed and pout."

Seriously. Anxiety-driven pouting is one of my fortes. It was definitely time to kick my ass into shape.

Not wanting to face my studio, I opted for a bike ride. I would try and find new bike trails and go up some steep hills and try my hand at a bit of early spring foraging. I like the idea of foraging. You get fresh, sometimes tasty and sometimes weird stuff for free. It's a skill you can use in the post-oil age. That's what I'll be doing when I'm not darning your socks. You can forage during bike rides, too. And it's free. J says that foraging makes us horribly cliched Guardian readers, led by Hugh to go trample in the fields and hedgerows looking for dinner, convinced that we're saving the world. But I don't care. I am willing to let Hugh lead me. Plus, secretly J likes foraging for all the reasons I do (especially the free part). So equipped with a map, my copy of Food for Free and having memorized this weekend's Guardian article on collecting wild garlic, I set off.

My book and the article said that this wild garlic was plentiful right now. That it's an easy thing for the novice forager to find. My thoughts upon entering the large country park near my house were not optimistic though: I didn't see any of this stupid garlic anywhere. It was supposed to look like lily of the valley leaves, but all I saw were rhododendrons. So I kept on riding, long enough for my legs to start aching a bit as I wove through the hilly trails, trying valiantly to not hit the pedestrians and their dogs.

Eventually I got to the river. I had never been down this path before, and although it was pretty packed with Sunday strollers, the banks of the river were thick with bright green leaves. Some would say they looked like lily of the valley, I would say tulips. Propping my bike against a tree, I picked one of these leaves, broke it in two and took a whiff. Garlic! Really green and fresh smelling garlic. Loads of it! This stuff is so easy to find that even a whiny brat in the throes of an imaginary life crisis can stumble across it!

I continued down the path now completely at peace with my place on the earth. I climbed more hills, refrained from mowing down toddlers, gazed at the fat pussy willows that were dotting the riverbanks and spotted some tiny and angry and prickly shoots of rhubarb, remembering their location for another forage a little later on. Ahh! Look at all the things I accomplished. If I had had a to-do list for this bike ride, I would have managed to cross everything off it, I bet. What a lovely ending to my too-short afternoon.

Of course, then the hail started, so I had to rush back, grab some of those garlicky leaves, squash them into my bag and race home. And what did I do with the wild garlic? Well, once again I deferred to Hugh's article and made myself wild garlic scrambled eggs on toast. Eggs may be the most accommodating way to try out a new soft herb. So I whisked two nice fresh, free-range ones in a bowls with s&p, and a dozen tiny cubes of butter. The toast went in at the same time as a blob of butter landed in the saucepan. After it melted, the eggs slipped in too and were quickly worked into soft and pillowy folds. I never used to put butter into the raw egg mixture, but it makes the scramble really delicious and never rubbery. Toast pops, eggs are done and the two are joined together in my stomach.

Next up, a fresh mayo for the dinner that night and some loaves of white bread to dip into it. Now that my legs were all sore and tight from biking, it was time to exhaust my arms. There was a lot of kneading first, and then a lot of whisking while the dough got fat. Sure you could use a food processor to make mayonnaise, but I don't have one and along with foraging and darning, intensive whisking is another useful skill that you'll be really happy I have post-oil. I took four egg yolks and sprinkled them with salt and started to whisk. I wrapped a tea towel around the base of my bowl to stop it moving around so I could continue to whisk and start to add a teensy stream of oil into the mix with my other hand. A tiny thread of oil, really. You have to be so delicate in the beginning, but then you can get a bit rougher later on. I used half sunflower oil and half olive and added it until I liked the consistency of the mayonnaise. And I couldn't stand the burning feeling in my arms anymore. Then I added more salt and about eight chopped leaves of the wild garlic. Lovely. Perfect with the fresh bread. Again, a fresh mayonnaise is a reliable buddy for almost any kind of soft fresh herb. And the bonus about using wild garlic leaves is that the garlic flavour, unlike a normal aioli that can become really overpoweringly if left for a while, is a much more subtle and bright. Although it will intensify after a couple of hours, it won't take over.

So, a couple of hours after thrashing around my bed in a panic of uselessness I had discovered a new bike path, found and experimented with a new plant, exercised all my limbs to the point of collapse, baked bread, made a mayonnaise and a tasty lunch. And it was still light outside. And it was finally time for me to put on my new shoes.