Wild medicine: Very Berry Jelly

I cycled into work this morning. The morning skies have outdone themselves the last few days. Sugar floss swirls of peach hued clouds whisp their way through the sky. The eastern light shining behind redbrick houses to my right and illuminating the auburn stone to my left. I guess in the city buildings become the 'natural' landscape. Buildings, lamp posts and shop fronts bounce light around from dawn to dusk, reflecting the sun's mood of the day. Intermittent natural nature found in the canal's waters, the reeds and wild grass cushioning its banks and the trees that line the streets on the outskirts of the city streets, reducing in numbers as they near the centre all ripple, dapple and shift the light as it moves from east to west.

I wrapped up in a doubled over scarf and winter woolen hat my Dad bought me years ago at a Christmas market in Berlin and felt oddly Scandinavian. The air had a clean, dewy taste as I pedaled my way to work. Autumn was a begrudging time for me for so long. I think it was because I always associated it with school and having to stay indoors when it was so beautiful outside, only to be released when it got dark. This year is the first since I was a little girl that the variety of colours and light are playing on my mind and making me smile at all the little changes that are transforming the landscape day by day so that as the weeks pass by there is a cumulative change in the trees, the air, the light and temperature that is helping winter make itself known.

Vibrant, buzzing salads with avocado and tomatoes and a variety of different lettuces are out of place when Autumn arrives. For a while, local produce seems isolated to muted colours of white, cream and green in potatoes and turnips. Not exactly inspiring for a colour obsessed cook. Then something happens. Squash season arrives with so many different hues of orange and red. Berries arrive too.
Blackberries, bubbled up deep black purple. Rosehips with their orange red hue. Hawthorn berries, like miniature red acorns, hardy against the frost and elderberries with their cluster of black-blue droplets of bitter sweet fruit juice.

Over the last two years, myself and my parents have gotten together and walked out into the fields to forage blackberries and elderberries from the hedgerows. Last year, I was afraid to make jelly with the berries, afraid it wouldn't set. Worry, worry, worry. So we made winter tincture instead. (Recipe to follow later).

This year, I've been trying not to let the fear hold me back. I've been focusing on just getting on with it. What's the worst that could happen? The jelly doesn't set and it tastes/looks awful. How often has that happened when creating new recipes? Once in a blue moon. Ok, I thought. Let's give it a go.

It turns out all the worrying was for nothing. Just as the sun does it's own thing, moving from east to west and nature moves through its seasons at its own steady pace, so too do trial and errors make up this little life of ours. I often get the fear when going for a wave. Just at the moment before the drop down the wave, I pull back, afraid of the unknown way the water will form and turn and sway and end. Often, I'm learning, jam making, surfing and life have one great thing in common. The unknown. You can prepare, plan, learn techniques, study recipes/techniques/form habits but at the end of the day, when it comes down to the crunch, you have to just go for it.

This very berry jelly is the finest glowing jar of goodness I have made ever. Elderberries are bitter sweet and spread their vibrant colors throughout the apples, giving off a radiant glow when they are jarred as jelly. Elder is a traditional wild medicine, known as the medicinal treasure chest, its berries are packed with vitamin C, anti-oxidants and immune system boosters, so in this jelly recipe you are getting well needed vitamins and a tasty treat that goes equally well on a slice of toast, with cheese or as a side to a meat dish. This is a recipe for elderberry jelly but redcurrant, blackberry, raspberry or any other autumn fruit would work just as well.

This jelly is easy to make, seasonal, local, medicinal, beautiful and a pleasure to make. Don't be hesitant to go for it. Make this beautiful treat and capture autumn in a jar.

Traditional jelly making is about using as many ingredients you have and then getting the ratios right. It can seem daunting but is really easy. Extra berries can be frozen and used for your next batch of jelly or jam making. I've made the recipe for 5 kg of apples per batch so that you can see the ratios clearly. Bear with me with the ingredients list and see it as something fun. Then go to method.

Ingredients:

As many bitter cooking apples as you can get your hands on
As many elderberries you can get your hands on.
White sugar
1 Cinnamon stick

Method:

Wash your apples and using a fork, pull the berries off their stalks.(see the photo above) Chop up 5kg of your apples with skin and core intact. Add the apples to a large, heavy based pot. For every 5 kg of apples, add 1 kg of elderberries. Add a cinnamon stick to the pot along with enough cold water to cover all the fruit. It doesn't matter what size your pot is, as long as the water covers the fruit completely. 

Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, with the lid on to keep in flavor and steam, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool slightly. Get a muslin cloth and place it over a bowl or use a straining jelly bag and pour the glowing apple berry mix into the cloth. Tie the bag and hang it over the bowl, allowing the purple juice to drip out. You can squeeze the bag to get all the juice out but it's better to let it drip overnight.

Later on, measure out the liquid into the washed heavy based pot. For every 1/2 litre of juice, add 400 grams of sugar. Once sugar is dissolved, bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 10-15 minutes. Test it to see if it has set. Then pour into sterilised, warm jars and seal with a lid. If you're not sure, scroll down to the method here. It explains it all.

If you can resist temptation, leave for at least two months to let the flavors develop. We couldn't wait. As soon as it had cooled, we spread mountains of it on sourdough toast.

I realise this was a long post but I love to do that every now and again. To share, to spread the goodness. Hope you like it.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. Otherwise, I hope you get as much joy out of these purple jars of wild medicine as I did. Enjoy your very berry jelly.

Big hug,
busylittlefoodie

Sticky vanilla fig jam

I can't believe it's been an entire month since the Luisa plum cake, made in the afternoon to escape the dense heat of the day. I can't fully come to terms with the concept that an entire month has gone by. Time really has flown and with those days of intense heat and tanned toes and red stripes of sunburn on my nose, came a lot of weeding, digging, planting, cleaning and generally doing. I came to Raglan with ideas of doing, packing in as much activity as I possibly could. From the get go, oblivious to the concept of jetlag needing time to wane, I set to work, volunteering my heart out. I had such a limited amount of time here, I thought. I had so many things I wanted to do and people to see and places to go. You see, for the last three and a half years, I've had unfinished business with this little town on the west coast. Tried as I might, a very large part of my heart was stuck here and refused to belong in Ireland. No amount of moving house or changing job or days in the garden were able to distract me and outwit my heart. There was unfinished business to be had, beneath the foothills of the Karioi mountain. She, that wonderous pregnant lady carved into the mountain, had business with me.

They say strong women who don't know their own selves fully, who aren't aware of their own capabilities or strength,  are drawn to Raglan, to wake up and be close to the mountain and her steady, knowing strength.  They say the mountain teaches women to be strong and discard what no longer serves them and give birth to their true selves. The mountain shaped like a pregnant woman, sleeps gracefully, resting with her feet in the sea water, her hair blowing into the hills. She is relaxed and yet her strong jaw line tells of a self awareness and inner strength. She is lying gracefully in the valley because she chooses to, not because she is stuck.

What does all this have to do with vanilla fig jam then? There are many times in my life, especially as I near thirty, that I feel stuck. Arriving in Raglan again and achieving that goal of a return journey, has felt like a release but as my time here nears its end, I can't help but wonder what the next step is and wondering if there will be movement in my future and the inner strength to do that and enjoy the journey. Oddly, for me, making jam, particularly out of fruit that was over ripe, not perfect looking, a bit dishevelled,  gives me great joy and a big kick up the arse in realising again that transformation is beautiful and beautiful creativity never came out of a perfect, ideal situation. Beautiful, creative change comes about through having a loving, honest yet creative perspective on the current situation and making something stunning out of it.

If you had looked at the bag of figs I had to start with, you might have picked out twenty of the best to cut up and look pretty in a cake or on some muesli in the morning and put the rest in the compost. I looked at them and thought, these figs need love and time and the patience to let them transform into something different and useful again. And so the sticky vanilla fig jam was born. Jam making teaches us to be patient, to care for something,  to dedicate ourselves to our craft, be mindful and to savour the results.  I'm going to spend the rest of my time here being patient, savouring the love and care of friends new and old and learn to have patience with myself so that I don't feel stuck but that I am where I am supposed to be right now and always have the choice to change, to transform to the next phase of me.

Make the most of fig season and watch those fruits transform from soft, blushed droplets to sticky, sweet, seeded, caramel goodness.

RECIPE
I ended up with 10 cups of fruit once it was all chopped. To this I added 7 cups of sugar. Most jams are equal parts fruit and sugar but I prefer boiling for longer on less sugar, it makes a better jam and just takes a little longer and a little bit more love. Make the time and reap the rewards.

Makes 6-8 300 gram jars

Ingredients
10 cups finely chopped figs
7 cups raw brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 lemon, juice and zest,
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 half cup water


Process
Wash fruit, cut off tops of figs and chop roughly into small chunks. Place in a heavy based large pot with water, lemon juice and lemon zest. Place a lid on the pot and simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes or until figs have started to soften considerably, especially the skin, but the pieces are still holding their shape. Meanwhile, put a small plate in your freezer (to be used to test your jam set later) Add in sugar, a cup at a time and stir through fruit until dissolved. Then add vanilla and cinnamon. Leave lid off and simmer, stirring every 10 minutes so it doesn't stick or burn.
While your jam is doing its thing, turn on your oven to 100°C. Wash your jars and lids in hot, suddsy water, rinse and place in the oven. These will dry and remove any bacteria that might spoil your jam. Not as tricky to prep jars afterall!

After about 40 minutes of low bubbling, your jam should be ready but this depends on the ripeness of the fruit. Take out your frozen plate and put a spoon of your jam onto it. Let rest for 1 minute then draw a line through it with your finger. If the two sides don't run into each other and the mixture wobbles, it's ready. If not, don't panic, just boil again for another 10 minutes and check the set again.

Once your jam is set, take it off the heat and give it one stir, then let it rest for 5 minutes.  This lets the fruit disperse evenly. Take your jars out of the oven and while they are still hot, fill to the ledge with jam. Seal with the lids. After 30 minutes,  give each lid one more squeeze tight. Leave it for a week if you can, longer still if you have the will power.  I generally don't.  This jam is perfect for brekkie on sourdough but equally is awesome stirred through yoghurt,  topped on ice cream or with creamy blue cheese on toast. Enjoy! Savour that transformation and the glowing jars of goodness you took the time to make.

Dear Luisa, plum and cardamon cake

'Are they Luisa plums?', a woman at Raglan's creative market enthusiastically asked me as the yummy, sticky sweet juice of a summer ripe plum ran down my arm, a kilo bag already in my bag. I'd already eaten about a kilo of them in the last week so may as well get stuck in as I meant to continue.  I gave her one for free and insisted she try it. This is the feeling this town brings out in me.  I was introduced to an amazing fruit picker and local extraordinaire of a woman, Sylvia about 10 minutes earlier by my lovely friend and wwoof host Anna. This woman had, literally, boxes of Luisa plums and since a box was going to waste she just gave them to us. It's this brilliant idea of gifting rather than hoarding something simply because it belongs to you that I love about how this town works. Unless you're an architect or high earning professional, most people don't have a whole lot of money here but they do have helpful, knowledgeable,  friendly people they know to exchange with, share and borrow from.

It's great to be back in this country and this town. Talking to an Irish friend Gill, an amazing teacher and all round special person, she pointed out something that I'd never been able to formulate into words about how I feel when I'm here. Ireland is beautiful but people there are predisposed to being negative. It starts with the weather and continues on to housing, taxes, politicians, the state of the roads and work. If you stop and take time to be positive or thankful or appreciative of a great day or a beautiful sunset, things that make me happy and energize me day to day, you're looked at strangely at home. Kiwis have their priorities right, we agreed. They appreciate down time, sunsets,  good surf, spending time with friends, sharing great food. Status is not financed based and in this town especially, success isn't measured by targets or bank accounts. It's measured by how good a friend you are, how much fun you had in the surf and what yummy food you can cook up for a potluck. I don't have to prove or battle out my priorities here because they are in line with everyone else's.  And it feels awesome.

Which brings me back to the Luisa plums. Like I said, I'm wwoofing at my friends Niall and Anna's for a while and today's task was using all that bounty of plums. I made two batches of cinnamon and star anise jam, that are now glowing and ready as gifts, winter warmness in a few months (it's not winter for another few months down here) and on toast in the morning, cause, you know, you have to test these things. The second use was to  bake a plum topped cake for a potluck tomorrow. Scented with cardamon and almond essence  it's a gluten, egg, butter filled cake that's for those who can handle all those and is inspired by the gluten free genius that is Emma Galloway  over at mydarlinglemonthyme. Emma is truly a genius but with so much fruit, I was looking for a slightly unhealthier yet equally tastier version of her recipe, substituting the rice flour and almond meal for self raising flour. I would have loved almond meal but didn't have it but the self raising flour allowed for the mix to absorb the cardamon, almond essence, cinnamon and lime zest. Yummo!

Ingredients:
4 eggs
165 grams butter, very soft
145 grams sugar, I used soft brown but coconut or caster sugar would work too
1 tsp almond essence
350 grams self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cardamon pods, ground in pestle and mortar
4/5 Luisa plums, halved, stoned then sliced lengthways
Zest of 1 lime, orange or lemon are also good, lime makes it fresh

Method:
Preheat oven to 180° C. Beat butter and sugar together and add one egg at a time until you have a lovely gooey mix. (Don't worry if there are a few lumps of butter, they'll beat out later). Add almond essence and kime zest. Sieve flour and add cardamon, cinnamon and  baking powder through it. Add to butter and sugar mix and mix well. Dollop out into greased tin, or even  better a silicon loaf tin, spread the mixture evenly. Add the plum lengths on top. Bake for 30-40 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool with a tea towel over. Serve luke warm with fresh yogurt or cream. Yum! 

Jam recipe follows in the next few days. If you have any fruit lying about, share it around, don't let it go to waste. You could get some jam or chutney or a cake in return. Better than that, you could make someone really happy. That's a noble priority to have. Fingers crossed the potluckers like the cake tomorrow! 

(Great hint from Anna, make a few little cakes in a muffin tin as a tester before you bring the cake over to a potluck.  This also got me thinking that as mini cakes, these are ideal for presents and as a snack for work, friends or picnics, same heat in the oven for 15 mins) 

Enjoy your week folks and try and gift something this week, your time, advice, a coffee, a dinner or a smile. It really makes your world a happier place.

Big hug from Raglan x

Jewellery and Jam, Jars of Jewelled Goodness

 

 

This post has been a long time coming. Four months of procrastination is about to be broken, right here, right now. As a foodie, it is not as though I have not been making food or dreaming up recipes. The opposite is true. Like some crazy lady, I've baking, cooking, eating and photographing for months. Each time I went to put up a new recipe for roasted courgette and nasturtium salad or homemade ice cream or even almond butter, something got in the way. It wasn't time. It wasn't a lack of ingredients or motivation even. It was pure, unadulterated perfectionist procrastination.

I am continually inspired by food bloggers, websites and people around me in general who seem to be able to find the time to be creative AND showcase it, either by showing their work, selling it or blogging about it. One wonderful person that falls into this category is Emma Galloway from My Darling Lemon Thyme. A chef, mother of two, wife and all round awesome individual, (she also comes from Raglan, my favourite place in the world so top marks for that) helped me out more than she could have known. Emma is a very busy lady but still took the time to answer my crazy email to her looking for advice. Insecure about all the things that weren't right about this website that oddly means so much to me, she gave me the best advice, "just do it". Don't worry, don't be a perfectionist, love it and do it. As simple as the advice sounds, I needed someone in the know to say it to me.

So here I am, typing and getting on with it. To celebrate the cooking, baking, foraging and learning that have gone on behind the scenes in the last four months, I'm sharing a beautifully simple yet very delicious jam recipe that really has been three months in the making. Blackberries were foraged from hedgerows with my Dad, Mam and two dogs as side kicks on three separate occasions down back roads by a lake near our house. Apples were taken from a very old apple tree next to an abandoned house and donated by Ger, another woman of the powerhouse group.                                                   

                                                                                               

As the weekends passed and I escaped the city to pick berries and watch the dogs run around, talk to my Dad about life, freeze berries and wrap apples in old newspapers, I knew all these ingredients were building up for something special. In the end, they amounted to something really special. You see, my Mam had breast cancer last year and this year, she organized a coffee afternoon to raise money for the LARCC Cancer support centre nearby. She made German Christmas cookies and I made jam. Clear, glowing, ruby coloured jars of delight. I made fifty nine jars in one day and sold nearly all of them. Thanks to generous donations, between the biscuits and coffee, jam, jewellery (which I also sold) and lots of love, we raised over 800 euro!

The waiting was worth it. The timing was worth it. I guess all good things take time.
Writing a blog is a lot like making jam. Everyone makes it look so hard, as though there is so much preparation and time involved, when really making jam and learning how to do it couldn't have been easier!

I hope this jam recipe brings you as much joy as it did me and helps you realise that life is just like jam making. It seems like things would be easier without the frivolities of doing something creative and outside the box but really, it takes such a short amount of time and before you know it, that creative streak that was begging to be let loose, brings about all sorts of joy and alleviates the stress that procrastination brought about.

With that thought, here's the recipe!

This makes about 6 x 8oz jars.

Base Recipe:
500 grams cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped into chunks
500 grams of blackberries, washed and strained
1 kg of caster sugar (no need for the added pectin sugar-apples take care of that!)
1 lemon-zest and juice
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
100 ml cold water
Small plate

Flavour variations:
1 cup of well brewed meadowsweet tea, meadowsweet drained before adding in at end
OR
3 tablespoons of elderflower cordial
3 tablespoons of crème de cassis (blackberry liquor) added in at end.
OR
You could also try cinnamon, vanilla or any other fruit liquor

Instructions:
The Prep
Preheat oven to 100 degrees C
Put your plate in the back of the freezer
Wash your jars and lids in hot water and detergent, rinse with hot water and place on a baking tray in the oven (this disinfects them and gets them ready for all that amazing jam)

The Cooking
Place large, heavy based pot on medium heat and add apples, water and cinnamon.
Place lid on top and allow to steam or 5 minutes.
Apples should have turned to mush. Make sure to stir so that it doesn't burn
Add blackberries and stir to mix the fruit evenly.
Boil gently on medium heat for 5 minutes
Add sugar and stir through until sugar has dissolved
Add lemon zest and juice of the lemon and stir through to distribute all the ingredients equally.
Turn up heat and boil for 10 minutes with the lid off.
Stir once half way through.
Take a teaspoon amount of the jam mix and put it on the "frozen" plate.
Leave it for 1/2 minutes. If you can move the plate around (like you're moving a pancake pan around with your wrist) and it doesn't move but has turned into a jelly, it's ready.
If not, no panic, boil again for another five minutes, check the set with the plate again and it should be fine.

The Jars of Ruby Goodness
When you're happy, ladle out your jam into the jars, filling it an inch or so below the top (usually there's a curve-stop there)
Seal the lid and use a towel to really tighten it.
Use a damp cloth to wipe the jam that has (inevitably-it's messy business) gotten everywhere.
Leave the jam to cool in  dark place. These have plenty of sugar so should keep a month or more in the cupboard.
Put it in the fridge once you open it but honestly, homemade jam is usually devoured long before the expiration date! Don't forget to label them! They make great gifts and went a long way to raising money for the LARCC Centre.

My dream is to have a pantry filled with beautiful jars of preserves, jellies, cordials and grains. Maybe this is the beginning. Thank you Emma for getting me back in the game.