Crab apples

I can remember that when I was younger my mum (or grandma, can't remember which!) used to make crab apple jelly, which we ate on thinly sliced white bread and butter. When I started up jillicious! earlier on this year, my sister mentioned that she remembered eating crab apple jelly when she was younger, and how tasty it was. I promised her that I'd try to get my hands on some crab apples and see what I could do...

So when we were chatting to our newly-introduced neighbours Anthony and Sue during the summer, and they told us that a gorgeous tree in their back garden was a crab apple tree, my eyes lit up! The tree was covered in rosy red and orange fruit.... and I mean covered! So a trip round to Anthony and Sue's later and I was the proud owner of 2 massive bags of crab apples! (Thank you Anthony and Sue!)


With Anthony and Sue's crab apples I made a few jars of spiced crab apple jelly, and a few jars of bramble and crab apple jelly. The former is cooked with cloves and cinnamon and as crab apples make a rose-coloured jelly, it is both spiced and pretty! The bramble and crab apple jelly takes on the colour of the brambles, so is a dark purple colour, and has a lovely flavour...bramble jelly with a bit of a bite!

Our friends Laura and Tom brought us a big galvanised pail full of crab apples from their garden a couple of months later, and with their crab apples I made crab apple and quince jelly and spiced crab apple and plum jelly. The crab apple and quince has a lovely flavour, slightly perfumed from the quince. The flavour of the spiced plum and crab apple jelly reminds me a bit of Christmas and mulled wine (yum!) and I reckon the gorgeous colour of the jelly is just the kind of uplifting sight you need at breakfast time this time of year!

See what I mean?!

I would eat these jellies on toast or bread and butter, as a sweet preserve but I think that they would probably go just as well with cheese and biscuits too. Why don't you try them and decide for yourself?

Autumn colours

I've come to the conclusion over the past few months that I'm a bit of a tree hugger (which is no bad thing!). There is something to be said for the feeling of happiness that I get when I see a beautiful flower, a sun dappled English hedgerow or a fruit laden-tree. We went to Batsford Arboretum in Gloucestershire a couple of weekends ago, and the autumn colours of the trees there were just breathtaking...... I read a couple of weeks ago that it's the British weather conditions that dictate the strength of the autumn colours. Bright, sunny autumn days and cold, but not freezing, nights with low levels of rainfall are what's needed for a vibrant display of reds, oranges and yellows.

The BBC website explains how the weather we've had this year has also led to a huge crop of hedgerow fruits like brambles, wild plums, rosehips and sloes. The weather this year has been that of extremes; the coldest winter in 30 years, the first late spring since 1976, a heatwave in late June and the coldest August in 17 years. Despite this though, because the 10-12 week period between May and early July was relatively frost free, the trees all had time to flower, be pollinated and set well with fruit.

Happy days! Let's hope next year will have equally as gorgeous tree colours and another bumper wild fruit harvest!

Sloe gin and damson brandy!

We went on a fab Autumn Foraging course in September, run by Woodland Ways (I would definitely recommend their courses!) It was a gorgeous sunny day, with blue skies and we foraged to our heart's content in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside. As well as learning about British trees and plants, we found some of these....

some of these........

and lots of these.....

which are sloes, and along with gin and sugar, make sloe gin. The blackthorn bushes were full of the things, and we picked a big bag to bring home and make into sloe gin... Happy days! I stuck the sloes in the freezer until I had time to make up the gin.....guess what the plan is for this weekend..?!

So I've dug my sloe gin recipe out, which, incidentally can be used for other fruits and other spirits, such as damsons, plums or cherries and vodka or brandy; damson brandy is my other favourite (and my mum's!). You can use this basic recipe and amend the ingredients according to the fruit and spirits you want to use. So here goes....

400g fruit (sloes, damsons, plums or cherries)

710ml alcohol (gin, brandy or vodka)

350g sugar.

Make sure that the fruit is dry and remove any stems. Stick the fruit in the freezer overnight (or longer if necessary - doesn't seem to do them any harm!), this will avoid the need to prick each of the fruits with a fork (which can be a very fiddly task with little sloes!)

Put the sloes into a large clean jar, kilner jar or the bottle that the alcohol came in, if the neck is wide enough! Pour the sugar on top of the sloes, and then cover with the alcohol (you might need to use several containers to use up all of the ingredients.)

Replace the lid on the container and give it a bit of a shake, to start to dissolve the sugar, and continue to shake once a day until the sugar looks dissolved. Put the containers into a dark place for about three months.

After that time, strain the sloe gin through a coffee filter placed onto a sieve and use a funnel to pour the alcohol into sterlised bottles. The recipe makes about 800ml of sloe gin.

The alcohol becomes quite liqueur-y, so sloe gin is much sweeter than neat gin and thankfully damson brandy tastes nothing like neat brandy (yuck!). I drink the damson brandy neat and prefer the sloe gin mixed with tonic water.

Get making now and you'll have home made pressies ready in time for Christmas. Hurrah!

Oh and I just thought I'd post this photo, as it's so cheery especially with autumn weather approaching! Something else we found on the foraging course....

Winner!

I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but I'm very chuffed! Today was Kidlington Gardening Society's Annual Show, and we thought we would enter some of our home grown and home made produce, to see how it would do (i.e. to see if other people think it's as cool as we do!) Sadly Kevin's runner beans weren't the longest ones there, and his Crown Prince squash and Sungold tomatoes didn't win a prize either (although I think they were the best in show!) I entered some jillicious jam (a jar of raspberry and a jar of mirabelle plum jam) into the "jam" category and a jar of bramble & crab apple jelly and a jar of last year's mango & apple chutney into the "preserves" category. Imagine my delight when we returned to the village hall after to the judging to find a "1st place" sticker on my entry card for the mango & apple chutney! So I think it's fair to say that jillicious produce is prize-winning!

There were plenty of other entries into the show.......

A cool collection of cucurbits....

...try saying that after you've had a few glasses of wine!

These are the cucurbits in question.........a mystery marrow (from a triffid-like self seeded plant in our front garden - where the plant has come from is anyone's guess!), a lovely round "Tondo di Toscana" courgette and a "Burpless" (yes, that really is its name) cucumber. All grown in the McRodd garden. Yum.

My plan was to use these veg to make some pickles for sale. As luck would have it, the latest Sainsburys magazine had a recipe for "spiced pickled marrow" - which I thought sounded....erm...at best, interesting, and at worst, downright weird...but with 6 big marrows sitting in the front garden, I was willing to give it a shot. After making the pickle (quite easy to do) I thought I should give it a taste, in the interests of quality control. Little did I imagine the development of a full scale addiction, rivalling only that of chocolate and rose wine! Blimey! So the upshot of this experience is that I am keeping all of the pickled marrow for myself I'm afraid, but I am going to post the recipe here in case anyone has a glut of marrows, courgettes or cucumbers and would like to make some of this addictive pickle too.

Spiced pickled marrow (makes 1.5L)

Peel a 2kg marrow, leaving a few streaks of green skin. Cut lengthways into quarters and remove the seeds. Halve the quarters lengthways again into eighths and cut into chunks about 2.5cm long. Place into a colander, sprinkle over 2 tsp of salt and mix, then put a plate directly on the marrow with a weight (such as some cans of beans on top). Leave for at least an hour to draw out some of the juice.

Meanwhile, wash your jars and lids in hot soapy water and sterilise in a low oven for 15 mins. They need to be warm when you add the pickle.

Rinse the marrow under cold running water and drain. Heat 2 tbsp sunflower oil in a large wide pan, add 1 finely diced onion and cook over a low heat for 5 minutes - do not let it colour. Add 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, seeded and finely diced and cook for 2 minutes. Add 570ml of white wine or cider vinegar, 450g of granulated sugar and 1.5 tsp of pickling spice. Bring gently to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the marrow; when the mixture is boiling, turn off the heat.

While it's still hot, use a slotted spoon to remove the veg from the pickling liquid, and pack into the warm jars as tightly as poss. Cover the contents of each jar with the pickling liquid. Screw the lids on tightly and leave to cool before using.

Enjoy, with salad, cheese, cold meat - or just straight from the jar dammit! Apparently it will keep for up to a year unopened, in a cool, dark place, although I don't think ours will last anywhere near that long, at least not if I get my hands on it!!

The wild plum detectives

Fresh from the mirabelle incident earlier on this week, we sniffed out another wild plum tree while we were out and about. The fruit on this one was smaller, and ranged in colour from yellow to amber to purple. The tree was also a lot smaller, so no ladders or grabber was necessary, which made the fruit picking that little bit easier! The tree was laden and the fruit was so ready to eat that it was dropping off the tree and straight into the carrier bag that I handily had with me..... (Girl Guide motto: Be prepared).........!

I picked about 2.5kg, and (of course!) made most of it into jam. The colour of this one is a much darker gold, compared to the mirabelle jam, but it is just as tasty! I have 7 jars of hedgerow plum jam for sale, all priced as usual at £2.95........

Operation mirabelle

At the weekend we went for a bike ride around Kidlington, on a bramble finding mission........ we found a few but most of them weren't quite ready yet (although I did manage to pick enough to make 4 jars of bramble jelly with, which are now available for sale!) On the way home we spied a tree with loads of very orangey yellow plummy looking fruit on it, most of which were completely out of my reach and were even difficult for my very tall husband to reach (so pretty darned high up!). A Google search later, I found out that the fruits were actually Mirabelles, also known as "cherry plums", which are of French origin and mostly used for jams and to make alcohol. Of course once I read the "j" word, I suddenly became v desperate to get my hands on as much of this fruit as possible for jam making purposes, so Kevin (very tall husband) and I hatched a cunning plan ("Operation Mirabelle") where we would return to the tree under cover of darkness with a ladder, so that we could steal....ahem...I mean "liberate" even more of them. After realising that the bit about going back under cover of darkness was probably highly impractical, we decided to go back to the tree a couple of evenings ago. Armed with a ladder and a Mirabelle grabber* (no patent pending, but there should be!) - a highly technical piece of kit invented by Kevin, we returned to the tree feeling v conspicuous and probably looking extremely suspicious. It's quite difficult to look like you're going about your everyday business with a stepladder under your arm! (I should probably point out now that this tree isn't in anyone's garden or on private land, but is on a piece of land leading to some fields, and it is definitely public access, but for some reason or other I still felt I was doing wrong!).

The amazing Mirabelle grabber worked very well, and after about 10 minutes picking we returned home, with 2.5kg mirabelles, a satisfied feeling, and no criminal record (phew!). All's well that ends well.



I have since made the mirabelles into some gorgeous jam (if I do say so myself!). It's a beautiful golden / orange colour and is quite tangy. Perfect on toast!



* It is amazing what you can do with one of those litter grabber thingies, some wire, a plastic bag and some clothes pegs!!

Raspberry jam

We were at Rectory Farm again at the weekend, this time for raspberries! There were loads ready for picking, and also some ready picked jam raspberries (which was just as well as I'm not sure how long it would take to pick the amount of raspberries I was after!)

I made a big batch of raspberry jam, which dad suggested would be good on scones with clotted cream, so obviously in the interests of testing the jam (ahem), we thought we should try it out.....


(....and he was right, it is good on scones, with clotted cream!)

I also made a small batch of raspberry and nectarine jam, which uses a raspberry puree for the raspberry part of the jam - so no seeds! It's a smooth, dark red jam with chunks of nectarine in it and smells and tastes lovely.



So I have 11 jars of raspberry jam, and 5 jars of raspberry and nectarine jam for sale, all at £2.95. I also made another batch of Grandma's beetroot chutney, so I have 12 jars of that for sale. Let me know if you'd like to order some, at jill.mceachern@ntlworld.com

Cherries and beetroot (but not in the same jar!)

Last weekend we went to two local pick your own places and weren't disappointed! I'd read on their website that Q Gardens has a cherry orchard where you can pick your own cherries which was too much of an opportunity to miss, so we tootled along to see for ourselves. The orchard was made up of a mix of trees, some with dark cherries and some with white cherries and there were moveable metal ladders all over the shop to help pick the cherries higher up in the trees. We picked a couple of punnets and sampled a few cherries as we went - they really did taste better straight off the tree!

We then headed over to Rectory Farm, where I was hoping to get some more jam strawberries. Sadly someone nobbled the last of them before I could get my hands on them (grrrrrr!) so I turned my attention to what other fruit and veg was available and was amazed to see that beetroot was on the list.

Twenty minutes later I had a bag full of beetroot and a recipe in mind! Not any old recipe but a VIR (Very Important Recipe), in fact royalty amongst recipes - my grandma's recipe for beetroot relish. Do not let the over-vinegared beetroot that you were made to eat when you were younger put you off trying this stuff as it is delicious. The recipe uses apples and onions in with diced chunks of beetroot, so it has quite a sweet flavour. Fab with cheese and a beautiful purple colour too. I have 6 jars of beetroot chutney available for sale and will definitely be making more in the next couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd like any - as usual the jars are priced at £2.95 each.

Strawberry overload!

I'm prone to exaggeration as much as the next person, but last weekend there really were strawberries in our kitchen as far as the eye could see (well.... almost!) Knowing I'd need strawbs for the jillicious! jam I was planning to make, and the wedding favours my pals Dave and Lianne had asked me to make for their wedding next month, I thought a trip to a pick your own place was the best bet. Once there, I seemed to be overcome by some kind of madness and proceeded to purchase 24lb of fruit - which looked like a manageable amount until we got home and suddenly we had a strawberry mountain in our kitchen. Yikes.

Needless to say, pretty much everything I did last weekend revolved around strawberries; I'm even sure I dreamed about them! After I made the wedding favours, I made several other batches of jam, so strawberry jam is definitely on the menu folks! I have.....

12 jars of strawberry jam
4 jars of strawberry jam with a hint of vanilla
9 jars of strawberry jam with a hint of rose water (may sound like a strange combination but it tastes gorgeous!)

All are priced at £2.95 per jar.

Contact me on jill.mceachern@ntlworld.com if you'd like to make an order. Please keep an eye on the sidebar of this blog as I'll be updating it with the number of jars that I have available.

Elderflower fizz

I found a recipe for elderflower champagne in a magazine recently and having made elderflower cordial before, thought the champagne was worth a shot! Elderflowers are out in abundance at the moment and the recipe is so easy that I thought I'd share it, in case anyone else fancied having a go. So here you go….

4 litres water
625g sugar
4 large elderflower heads (strip the flowers from the stem with a fork)
2 lemons
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Put the sugar into a large container (we used a big pan with a lid) and add boiling water, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool before adding the elderflowers. Then add the juice of one of the lemons and slice the other lemon and add it to the mixture. Finally add the vinegar.

Cover with the pan lid or with a cloth or plate and leave it for a day, then strain through a fine sieve or muslin, squeezing the flowers to release the flavour. Store in screw top bottles (old, washed and sterilised wine bottles with screw caps come in handy here!) - it will be ready in about 10 days. Drink it chilled (preferably whilst enjoying the sun and reclining on a comfy chair outdoors)

It's definitely a lazy summer's day kind of recipe - pick the elderflowers, do a bit of mixing and then leave it for a bit to do its thing! I must admit I was a bit sceptical about where the fizz would come from - trying a sip of the mixture as it went into the bottles, it was a flat as an …erm…...pancake…. but some elderflower magic obviously took place as it was maturing, as there's definitely a sparkle to the finished product! Mum was our guinea pig and tried it at the weekend - she declared it delicious, so we tried it too and it is delicious………just like summer in a bottle! Have a go and see for yourself……..

(Oh and just so you know, this drink is apparently mildly alcoholic.....)

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb!

A couple of weeks ago we went to visit my friend Ruth, who had told us she had "some" rhubarb in her garden that I could have to make jillicious produce with. When we got to her house we were faced with a monster rhubarb patch with howge stalks, each about 3 foot long! After Ruth told us to pick way more than I'd expected, we returned home with what felt like my body weight in rhubarb and I got cracking with my rhubarby recipes.


First off I made Spring rhubarb relish, a light fruity relish that is made with rhubarb and sultanas, with a hint of fresh ginger, cloves and cinnamon from the spice bag that is used as the mixture is cooking. There are several good things about this relish....

1. It contains no onions (so perfect for those of you who don't like onions!)
2. It doesn't need to mature before you can tuck in......so you can eat it NOW!
3. It is v tasty, especially in a cheese sarnie!

Next up was Rhubarb and ginger jam, which might sound a bit odd, but rhubarb and pieces of preserved ginger are a winning combination! The first batch I made used an equal amount of fruit to sugar and the resulting jam is sweet and claggy (as we say up north) - so probably best on toast, and for those with a sweet tooth! I made a second batch of the jam with rhubarb kindly donated by Anastasia from work, this time using less sugar - and ended up with a softer set jam - perfect to have on bread and butter.

So, I therefore have for sale:

• 14 jars of Spring Rhubarb relish
• 6 jars of claggy Rhubarb and Ginger jam
• 6 jars of soft set Rhubarb and Ginger jam

All are priced at £2.95 per jar (please return your empty jars to me, so that I can use them again. I'll give you 20p per jar off your next purchase). Email me on jill.mceachern@ntlworld.com if you'd like to place an order, and please keep an eye on the sidebar of this blog, as I'll be updating it with numbers of jars available. Remember when they're gone, they're gone!!

If anyone would like to donate unwanted or excess rhubarb or other fruit or veg, please let me know - in return, I'll give you a jar or two of the preserves I have made from it (Thanks Ruth and Anastasia for getting the ball rolling!)