Elderflower Cordial...Solstice magical drink!

Making Elderflower Cordial

So happy it's this time of year again! And this years blooms are spectacular! Make sure you harvest on a dry day when the pollen is full and complete, rainy days it gets washed away. Make sure they are young, fresh blooms with no bad bits. If you follow this to the letter it will last all year long as long as you store it somewhere cool and dry. Elderflower is fantastic medicinally, I was drinking it all winter to keep away colds and flus' and all those common winter nasties, it's all good for the immune system!

Ingredients:

900g/2lb caster sugar

3.5g citric acid

1 lemon

½ litre boiling water

10 elderflower heads

Method:

In a large container/bowl, add the sugar and cover in boiling water, stirring until dissolved. Add citric acid. Grate rind of lemon and add into bowl. Slice the lemon and add to mixture. Add elderflower heads. Cover with lid or tea towel and leave to infuse for 12 hours. Strain through muslin, bottle and store for one month before serving. Dilute in water or soda water with a bit of fresh mint. 

Rhubarb Champagne...spring tanginess!!

Rhubarb Chamapagne

Great to make with new, young rhubarb shoots. it's an unusual tasting one, not to everyone's taste, and can taste very different from batch to batch. Be careful how you store this, I've had glass bottles explode over me in bed with a cascade of glass and champagne, it gets really fizzy! So plastic is better. 

Ingredients:

1 kg rhubarb
3 cups sugar
6 teaspoons white vinegar
4 litres water
2 lemons

Method:  Cut rhubarb into small pieces; add to large bowl/container.  Slice lemon in strips with rind on it.  Add lemon slices and rest of ingredients to the rhubarb.  Cover and leave for 48 hours stirring occasionally.  Strain 3 times.  Bottle and label.  Leave for two weeks to mature. 

Wild Garlic Pesto from Ballyseedy Woods

I first made wild garlic pesto last year after a visit to Tralee, Co.Kerry and we had made our regular trip to Ballyseedy Woods for a walk and to harvest some wild garlic from the what seems like miles and miles of it that covers the woodland floor at that time of year! We harvested a large bag of leaves. And took them home to get pesto making!

How I make wild garlic pesto:
I don't use quantities with this one, I totally improvised. Firstly I blended up the leaves (after washing and chopping them) with some organic olive oil. For the cheese I used a combination of blue cheese and Parmesan cheese, chopped small and grated. For the nuts I used a combination of pine nuts and cashews (chopped or blended fairly fine), again it was whatever I had in the cupboard, I didn't add any extra garlic as I decided the wild garlic would be strong enough on its own. Blend this all together - at this stage you may choose not to use the mechanical blender, it depends on how smooth you want your pesto to be, I just mixed it in by hand and left it as chunky pesto.Bottle it up, being sure to pour in a layer of oil on top - this is your seal of freshness - as long as there is a layer of oil the pesto will last ages.

It tasted delicious, especially on toasted cheese! And it is still going strong  in April 2013, a year later!

Winter Cough Syrup - the magic of Elecampane

Elecampane is a little known medicinal herb plant, that belongs to the Aster or Daisy family, it's latin name is Inula helenium. In France and Switzerland it is used in the making of Absinthe! An interesting fact I found out is that Susan O'Shea, a research student at Cork Institute of technology, has shown that extracts from the herb kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as well as a broad spectrum of other bacteria.

It's a herbacious perennial, so it dies back every winter. And it is in the winter that you dig up some of the root for medicinal purposes. From Plants for a Future': A gently warming and tonic herb, it is especially effective in treating coughs, bronchitis and many other complaints of the chest as well as disorders of the digestive system. It cleanses toxins from the body, stimulating the immune and digestive systems and treating bacterial and fungal infections. The root is antiseptic, astringent, bitter, cholagogue, diaphoretic, diuretic, mildly expectorant, gently stimulant, stomachic, tonic.'

It's main use is as an expectorant, so to bring up and get rid of phlegm! So when you are chesty of have a bad throat or cough, elecampane syrup is just what you need!

How I make Elecampane Syrup:
When the plant had died back in winter, dig up part of the root, making sure to leave some for growing next year. Scrub the root clean, and slice it into small pieces. put it on a large pot of water, and bring to the boil, let it infuse at a medium heat for 10-15 minutes. Turn of the heat, leave to infuse for a further 10 minutes. Strain off the root using muslin and a strainer. Add sugar to taste (the more you add the longer it will last), heat gently until the sugar dissolves in, be careful not to over heat it again or the taste turns bitter. Bottle it, and keep in a very cool place or in the fridge.  Drink it by adding in some hot water and take as a hot drink, two to three times a day when phlemy/throaty. It turns this amazing green colour when you have infused it in the water. And I think it tastes delicious!

Childhood memory..the one and only Rosehip Syrup, Sept 2012

One of my memories of my childhood in Celbridge of all places is going down some of the side roads outside the village and hunting for rosehips with my mother. Then she would magically make the syrup, and I would take it to school in my red and orange flask, that went with my red and orange lunch box with yogi bear on the front.

I finally got around to making to for the first time myself a few years ago, and now make it ritually very autumn. I have even gone as far as to grow my own Rosa rugosa in my garden so I have my own crop of them to harvest from. Rosa rugosa is the cultivated rosehip, and is ready to harvest and use earlier than the wild rosehip, which isn't ready until the first frost has hit.

How I make Rosehip Syrup: This recipe is adapted from Roger Phillips amazing 'Wild Food' book, which as far as I know is now out of print.

Ingredients: (adapt this to the quantity of rosehips you have, you can use wild rosehips and the cultivated rosehip - Rosa rugosa) 2lb rosehips, 3 litres/41/2 pints water, 450g/1lb organic cane sugar, large cooking pit, sharp knife, muslin/jelly bag, 1l sealable bottles.

Method: Wash your rosehips, taking off the stalks as you go. Roughly chop up the rosehips and place in a pot of boiling water(2 litres). Bring back to the boil, then remove from the heat and leave to sit and infuse for 15 minutes, (do not over boil your liquid here, gentle touch is very important through this whole process). Strain liquid and pulp through your jelly bag or muslin quickly. Return the pulp to the pot and add the remaining 1 litre of boiling water, return liquid to the boil, take it off the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes and then strain as before. Pour ALL the juice (I strain the juice for a second time through muslin to make sure none of the hairs from the rosehips get into the liquid, you need to be very careful about making sure no hairs get into your drink) into a large, clean saucepan and simmer until it reduces to around 1 litre (1 1/2 pints), this takes quite a while, and make sure you don't boil the liquid or you lose the vitamin C and change the taste of the syrup! When it has reduced, add the sugar, stir until dissolved, then boil for 5 minutes. Pour the syrup, while still hot into hot, clean bottles or jars, sealing the lids immediately to seal the lids.

For sterilised jars/bottles, the best method is to cook them in the oven for around 20 minutes beforehand at around 100 degrees Celsius. Rosehip syrup has a tendency to go off more quickly than the other drinks and cordials. I am going to experiment with freezing some of the liquid this year to see if that works, and if it will elongate the time I get out of the rosehip syrup. If you open your bottle of syrup and find that there is some mould on the top of the liquid, do not despair, the syrup is actually still ok to drink. All I do is strain the liquid through some muslin again to get rid of the mould and the syrup is still delicious to drink. When I open a bottle of syrup I also keep it in the fridge until it's used up.

Plum chutney,literally to die for! Sept 2012

My aunt gave us a present of plum chutney last year at Christmas, and it was literally the most delicious chutney I have ever tasted, tasting the best alongside a few sausages for a kind of guilty pleasure lunch! So when my dad had a bumper crop of plums this year I took the opportunity to have a go at making the chutney myself. It didn't tutn out exactly like my aunts' but I have to say it is still pretty delicious, also it does need to mature for a few months as well!

How I make plum chutney: I used Delia Smith's recipe, it was the only one I could find. I followed it pretty much to the letter...
Ingredients: 3lb/1.3kg plums, 1kg cooking apples, 3 onions, 3 cloves garlic, 2 heaped tsp ground ginger, 1lb seedless organic raisins, 1lb dark soft brown sugar, 1lb demerara sugar (I used my organic cane sugar for all the sugar in this), 2 pints malt vinegar (again I always use whatever vinegar I have in the cupboard, I have a soft spot for white/red wine vinegar, I think it's a gentler vinegar, taste wise), 2 tbsp salt (I eased this in a bit at a time according to taste, to make sure it wasn't too salty), 2 small cinnamon sticks, 1 dessertspoon of whole cloves (I put the cinnamon and cloves in a small muslin bag and inserted in the pot, it's easier to remove them afterwards), Delia also has 1oz of allspice berries, which I don't think we have in Ireland, but the chutney tasted amazing on just the cloves and cinnamon anyway. A large pot, muslin, jars with lids.
Method: Wash and dry the plums. Slit them down the natural line of the fruit and de-stone them, putting the halved plums straight into your pot as you go. Core, peel and chop up the apples, adding them to the pan next. Chop the onions up finely and add to the pot.

Crush and chop the garlic, add it to the pot. Then add the ginger, raisins, the sugar and the vinegar. Sprinkle in the salt,carefully, tasting as you go and stir everything thoroughly. Put your spices in your muslin bag and add them to the mix. Bring the mix to the boil, carefully, then lower the heat and let the chutney simmer very gently for 2-3 hours! Yes, 2-3 hours! Be very careful of it, watch and make sure it doesn't boil up in any way, and keep stirring it regularly especially when you are getting near the end to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. When it has thickened up and the vinegar has nearly all disappeared that means it is ready. It will thicken more when it has cooled, so don't overcook it. While still warm ladle it into hot, sterilised jars, place a wax disc or piece of grease proof paper cut into a circle on the top and seal with a lid. Label and date when cold and store in a cool, dry cupboard. Leave to mature to for around three months before eating (I couldn't actually wait the three months and it was still delicious!)

Raspberry Vodka

I harvested a glut of raspberries from my dad's garden yesterday, beautiful big red, ripe and very tasty raspberries. We decided to split them into three categories for eating, top bowl, squashy and very ripe ones for eating, middle bowl, perfect condition ones for freezing and good quality, last bowl, were a bit riper for some raspberry vodka!! Yes indeedy! This is my first time making the vodka with raspberries. I had a look on the internet and found the recipe below (http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/raspberry-vodka-recipe-362/), however I just followed my gut on this one! So, split the vodka evenly between 2 bottles (It was a 0.7l sized bottle of Lidl's finest vodka!) Fill to nearly full with raspberries (you are supposed to wash them, I didn't, I think it very quickly reduces the quality of the raspberry), it doesn't matter if they get squashed on the way in, and then finish off with 8-10 tsp of organic cane sugar (I am actually making a dent in my 25kg bag of sugar!). Store in dark, dry, cool place and leave for at least 3 months. Turn/shake occasionally to get the sugar to dissolve into the liquid. Taste every now and then and add more sugar if needed.