There’s something enormously satisfying about getting food for free – if you ignore the personal cost of the bramble scratches, nettle stings and midge bites.
You can make this jelly with a wide variety of hedgerow fruits in addition to the crab apples – try blackberries, wild plums (bullaces), sloes and elderberries. If you can’t source crabapples, cooking apples will do. Continue reading
I can’t help noticing that there’ve been a lot of people looking at my bullace jam recipe lately and I thought another use for these tasty wild plums might not go amiss. Continue reading
I think the best pannacotta I ever ate – in fact I think it was the first I ever ate – was years ago in Italy when I was doing a television feature on the Slow Food movement.
The lovely Slow Food people took us to a restaurant in a wisteria-covered courtyard close by their office. The food was good but I was so blown away by the dessert I can’t remember anything else on the menu. Continue reading
I love the foamy, scented flowers of elder but on balance, I probably love them more when they’re made into a fragrant summer drink. Continue reading
I’d never heard of bullaces before I moved to Suffolk. Now I’m knee deep in them.
They’re a type of wild plum that grows in the hedgerows in East Anglia, although different varieties apparently grow in various parts of the UK, from east to west. Continue reading
I love foraging in the fields and hedgerows. There’s something really satisfactory about free food – free except for the quantities of sugar and/or vinegar and/or gin you need to make something tasty, anyway. Continue reading