An accidental harvest - Hawthorn Flowers

So all of a sudden flowers are blooming in the hedgerows and at the beginning of June it is cordial making time.  I had hoped to pick elderflowers but lacking any bushes in the immediate area, I decided to pick hawthorns.  Actually, that is a total lie.  I went out and started stripping a bush of its flowers and thought 'hold on a minute, these don't smell very elderflowery' - got out my iPhone and Googled 'elderflower'.  Hmmm, what the hell was I picking?  These flowers were not elderflowers.  Not wanting to tip two carrier bags full of flowers into a ditch, I took them home and hunted out what I had collected, and it turned out to be hawthorn flowers. 

So what could I do with these?  I noticed that when the flowers are a little bit yellow they can smell a bit fishy, which isn't that nice, so I've avoided using these as I didn't fancy anything that smelled like fish.  I looked online and found a Hawthorn tea recipe.  Simply put a load of flowers into a teapot and pour over boiling water.  Apparently good for high blood pressure, this tea has a slightly numbing floral scent to it and a bit like a hot summer day hedgerow.  It is pleasant enough when sweetened with a little honey or maple syrup, but I'm not a fan of herbal teas so won't be going down this path again soon.

I reckoned that the simple, summery floral aroma would also be able to be made into a cordial - slightly lighter than Elderflower, but hopefully just as nice.  I typed into Google 'Hawthorn Cordial' and came up with several recipes, but one stood out.  From www.vintagerecipes.net, I found a very simple cordial recipe involving the flowers and brandy. 

Now obviously brandy is expensive and I wouldn't be able to go out and buy some, but I did have half a bottle sitting in my kitchen and thought i might as well make use of this and add it to the menu.  At least I now have something alcoholic for the end of the meal!

Hawthorn Boozy Cordial

Ingredients

Hawthorn Flowers minus any leaves or stalks

Brandy (make it something half decent)

A tablespoon of sugar

Simply, I put a lot of flowers (minus any stalks or leaves) into a glass bottle and a tablespoons of sugar.  Then poured in the brandy over the top and there I will leave it for the next three months.  In September, I'll drain off the flowers and pour it back into another bottle (having a taste in the process) and see if I've wasted some perfectly good brandy or not.

Wild Garlic Pesto

If ingredients are the bricks of a house, then the cement holding them all together is usually two flavours - onions and garlic.  We love them, putting them into all sorts of dishes whether they are traditionally in there or not.

So realising that there may be a need for some garlic in December when I get round to making my Christmas dinner, I ventured into a couple patches of woodland to pick wild garlic - the first natural crop of the year.

Wild Garlic, or Ramsons to give them their proper name, is a plant that you will inevitably come across before even if you haven't noticed it.  They grow in moist soils in or at the edge of deciduous woodlands, often near bluebells, and are unmistakable due  to their garlic aroma wafting in the air.  

All of the plant is edible.  The leaves can be used in salads, or boiled as a vegetable, the flowers an attractive and powerfully flavoured addition to a plate.  The bulb (which is more like a spring onion than a garlic bulb) is edible raw or cooked, but it is illegal to dig them up without the landowners permission, and if on public land, you simply are not allowed to dig them up at all.  You can however collect the seeds from the pods in early summer (edible also), and can also buy bulbs from certified sources if you want to grow them yourself.  

WARNING Ramsons are very similar in appearance to poisonous, and possibly deadly, plants including Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), Colchicum autumnale and Arum aculatum but a there is a simple test that can be done to check what you are picking.  Ramsons are the only leaf that, when crushed between your fingers, smells of garlic.  There are also differences in the way the plants are presented, with differences to the flowers and stems.  Click here for further information.

I decided to make pesto with my first crop of the season, jarring some for immediate use and freezing some to use throughout the rest of the year and, of course, at Christmas.  When making this, it is important that you make sure that any remaining pesto in the jar is covered with olive oil to seal it from the air, and keep it in the fridge.  The fresh pesto will last about three weeks and comes from The River Cottage website.

The Theory

Ingredients

100g Wild Garlic Leaves

50g Mild Onions or leeks

50g Pine nuts, walnuts, brazil nuts - anything really

200ml Oil - Olive, sunflower or rapeseed

50g Finely grated hard cheese - Parmesan

Pinch of salt

Pinch of sugar

After you have thrown away any tough stalks, damaged leaves and washed the leaves, blitz the leaves, onions, nuts and 3/4 of the oil in a food processor until everything is finely chopped.  Fold in the cheese, salt and sugar and then put into sterilised jars.  Press down firmly with the back of a spoon to remove any pockets of air (words like botulism appear in warnings) and cover with a layer of oil.  If you want to freeze it, put it into small containers and freeze immediately.

The Practice

Even I can't mess this one up thought I!  I picked the garlic and tested every plant that I picked from just to make sure that I wasn't going to kill myself with toxic leaves.  Then once home, I started picking out all the leaves which were broken or covered in bird poop was the first task, which although time consuming was quite rewarding.  I had some walnuts in my cupboard, but any non-salted nuts will do, and instead of using the spring onions I used half an onion that I'd left over from making onion gravy.  Oil is fortunately one of the ingredients exempt from my budget, so I just used the olive oil I had, but what to do about the cheese?  Cheese is a big chunk of my budget, so what could I do?  Well, I found that I had some dried out parmesan in the fridge.  It meant putting a little more elbow grease into grating it, and the rind was equally useable in this dish, so that went in too.  Cheese for nothing - perfect!

The one thing I did notice was that when you have all the ingredients laid out before you, there is a reluctance to accept that this is supposed to fill five 200g jars.  Still, persevere I did and I rapidly found out that my blender is no good for making pesto.  A food processor is a nice simple gadget - a big blade in a big based jug.  A small blade in a tapered jug resulted in me picking the damn thing up and giving it a good shake to knock the remaining leaves down to the blade of the blender.  A few swear words later, I had something that resembled pesto, so I mixed in the cheese and filled the jars.  I was right, the measurements for this do not fill five 200g jars, it fills two and a small amount that I popped in a bag and put in the freezer for Christmas.  

Despite the farcical behaviour with my blender, and the fact that this recipe only makes half the amount it was supposed to, I'd say it was a success.  I have two small jars of wild garlic pesto to use over the next three weeks - perfect for some springtime pasta.

Further harvesting...
I decided to harvest some more ramsons a little later on and rather than make a pesto I simply blitzed the leaves with a little olive oil and then froze them into small ice cubes.  I'll be using these to add a gentle garlic flavour into cooking in the winter.

Initial thoughts 2: Where will I get the veggies from?

It is pretty easy to grow vegetables for a Christmas dinner.  Carrots, Parsnips and Potatoes are all very simple.  You dig a hole in the ground, plant a seed or a tuber, cover them up, water and leave them to it.  They pretty much grow themselves.  The problem I have is that I don’t have any land in which to plant root vegetables and you can’t have Christmas dinner without roast potatoes so I need to figure out how I’m going to get root veg.  Another ‘must have’ on the Christmas table is Brussels Sprouts and I haven’t a clue how I am going to find them.  There are plenty of farmers on the east coast of Scotland that grow sprouts, so maybe that may call for bartering.

I have a very good book on finding mushrooms, called Mushrooms by Roger Phillips and have already found a place where I know Chanterelle mushrooms grow.  There are also many other fungi in woodlands and on trees so I need to learn what is edible and what isn’t.  Due to the desire I have to not be poisoned by a rogue toadstool, I have every intention of finding a guide who can help me positively identify every mushroom I pick.  I’ll then (after having a few of them lightly fried on toast) learn how to preserve wild mushrooms for either use in the feast or give out as gifts.

Seaweed is in abundance on the east coast of Scotland, and with the help of the internet and a few books, I want to explore this massively unused source of food.  I am sure that by drying and rehydrating, they could provide a suitable alternative to cabbage or other green, leafy veg.  I have also heard that there is a lot of samphire on the beaches too, and I hope that I can find out what to do with this plant, that appears to be a staple on all Michelin star restaurant menus.

Herbs are the things that I don’t have a problem finding.  Aside from the two (small) rosemary plants that are already in my tiny flowerbed, I have a thriving sage plant and am going to plant various herbs in pots and keep them outside my house.  Sure, some may get pinched by the occasional passing rambler, or peed on by a passing dog, but such is the way with growing food!  I have heard that there is some wild garlic growing in a park in St Andrews, so hopefully that should provide me with some much needed flavouring.

I also have a chilli plant in my kitchen window that appears to continuously be producing fruit.  I’ve frozen some chillies grown from this plant, so may use those in the autumn months when I’m making preserves and chutneys.

I reckon that with a bit of lateral thinking I should be able to provide the necessary veg for a Christmas feast, even if it does mean bartering with allotment owners or farmers.  The next thing I need to figure out is fruit.