Category Archives: Recipes

Crabapple (& Rowan) Jelly

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You can always tell when a crab apple is ripe. Pick one and bite it. If you scream it is not. But if your face just wrinkles up as if you were sucking a lemon, then it is probably about right…. Crab apples really are some of the bitterest fruit around.

But they taste fantastic in the right place. As do Rowan berries (of which there are are a fair few this year). The raw rowan berry is rather mealy and sour – edible but it tastes grotty. However the two together plus a bit of sugar make a jelly that knocks spots off anything that ever first saw the light of day in a jam factory. You can also make this jelly with crab apples by themselves (we tend to make up a batch of each). Crab apples are full of pectin so this is one of the easiest jellies to make – here is how:
Ingredients

This recipe is scaleable but this quantity of ingredients will yield roughly 1.5kg of jelly
3lbs (1.4kg) crab apples
3lbs (1.4kg) of rowan berries (not necessary but they make and interesting variation)
Juice of 1 lemon
Sugar
Jelly bag or Muslin (or mythical felt hat)

Instructions

Wash the Rowan berries and remove any stalks. Put them in a pan, add half the lemon juice, just about cover with water and bring to a fast simmer. Carry on cooking until they are REALLY soft.

Do exactly the same with the Crab Apples (including adding the other half of the lemon juice). Perfectionists peel the apples, but we can’t see why.

If your (scalded) jelly strainer/muslin/hat is big and strong enough, put the contents of both pans in together and leave to strain for at least 4 hours. Otherwise do them separately and mix the juices afterwards.  You can squeeze the bag, which will give you more juice, but your jelly will be cloudy although the taste is unaltered.

Measure the strained syrup into a heavy pan, heat gently and add 1lb (450g) sugar for each pint (575/600g) of liquid.

Stir well until completely dissolved. Then bring it to the boil and cook fast until setting point is reached.

Skim, pot, seal and dispense to friends in the usual way.

You can experiment with this recipe – try adding cloves, or rosemary or lavender or ginger (not all at once). Outstanding with brandy as well….. Oh yes, and a friend of ours who always makes too much cider, boils up her crab apples in cider and then follows the recipe. Stunning.

We think the best crab apples for this are:

Malus hupehensis for red jelly,

and Golden Hornet for golden jelly

Enjoy

Gooseberry Ice Cream (Utterly Delicious)

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Gooseberry Ice Cream Recipe to make at home

I know this blog is themed around hedging, but…. June and July is the time of year that your gooseberries should be ready for picking – traditionally this is at Whitsun (which is the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday) but as Easter this year was the earliest that it has been since 1913, on 23rd March, this means that you traditionally would have been picking by 17th May, which would have been far too early!

(Pub quiz trivia – And why was Easter so early? It is affected by the lunar cycle: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs after the spring equinox. This year, the first day of spring was 20th March, and the full moon after was 21st March).

Gooseberries are better for cooking when they are slightly unripe (hard and green) and they certainly keep in the fridge longer when they are like that. Invicta is far and away the best in this category; it has a richer flavour and crops better than Careless gooseberries do.

Gooseberries make a wonderfully different ice cream. Ruth’s recipe, shown below is the tastiest and easiest we have come across:

Gently cook 1lb of gooseberries with very little water (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan) and sugar to taste.
When the berries are soft, puree them and leave to cool.
Beat 4 egg whites to the soft peak stage and then gradually beat in 8oz of caster sugar
Fold the gooseberry puree gently into the egg
Whip half a pint of double cream
Fold the cream into the egg white mixture and freeze


Creative Commons License

Gooseberry Icecream Recipe (Utterly Scrumptious) by
Ruth is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
the Ashridge Trees site.

Oh, by the way – Gooseberries are best planted before the New Year (in November and December) so they have more time to establish before they come into growth in the spring.  If you are planning on planting some, take a look at the Soft Fruit bushes on our main website.  We have a great range of soft fruit and there are good tips as well.

Enjoy your plants

Elderflower Champagne Recipe

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When you have enough Elderflower Cordial (you can get to our favourite recipe here) you might like to think about Elderflower Champagne. By the way it is a good excuse to plant a few more Elder (Sambucus nigra) bushes – available at http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Common-Elder-Sambucus-nigra as you will find you have friends calling round in June and July almost daily and for the oddest reasons…..

This is a recipe that has been in our family for at least four generations and it is known as Gonga’s Pop – after the great-grandmother of the present youngest generation. She used to make it to keep us quiet when we were kids – being mildly alcoholic (about the same as a light lager) it did that very nicely. It is also the best Elderflower Champagne recipe we know:

You will need (to make 10-12 litres):

  • a really clean container big enough for the mix (large bucker, bin, brewing tub etc)
  • a clean cloth (muslin is best) to cover said container
  • strong bottles which will need to be sterilised at bottling time (the ones with spring closures are best, but screw capped fizzy drinks bottles work well)
  • syphon tube (one with a clip or tap on the end is preferable)
  • 35 elderflower heads – pick the ones with the strongest scent
  • 2.5kg granulated sugar
  • 2 proper tablespoons of white wine vinegar
  • 5 litres boiling water & some cold water
  • Juice and grated skin (zest) of 5 lemons – unwaxed if possible
  • Juice and grated skin (zest) of 1 lime – also unwaxed

Instructions:

  • Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water then put in the large container and add cold water to make a total volume of between 7 and 8 litres.
  • Mix in the elderflowers, the white wine vinegar, the lemon and lime juice and their zests and stir the brew.
  • Cover the whole thing with the clean cloth (or use an airlock if you are a brewer) and put it in a cool place to ferment for two days. If, after a couple of days it has not started fermenting (easy to tell as there will be a foamy sort of scum on top) then add a pinch of dried yeast to get it going. Generally you will find that enough wild yeasts came in with the elderflowers for this not to be necessary.
  • Keep the container covered/airlocked and let the champagne carry on fermenting for another 4-5 days.
  • Using a winemakers sieve or the muslin you covered it with, strain the champagne into another container, let it settle for a couple of hours and siphon it into the sterilised bottles. Do make sure they can take a LOT of pressure – this is not known as Gonga’s Pop for nothing. Seal the bottles tightly. N.B. If you are using plastic drinks bottles keep an eye out for ones that start bulging – if they do, loosen the cap to let some carbon dioxide out and then tighten again.
  • Leave it to ferment for at least another week after which it is delicious although it gets better with age. In nearly a hundred years the family has never found out how long it keeps – however much was made never lasted more than a year…

Enjoy ice cold


Creative Commons License

Elderflower Champagne Recipe by
Frances Bosdari is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
http://blog.ashridgetrees.co.uk.

Hedgerow Jelly

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This an excellent recipe which can be adapted to accommodate almost any hedge (and its fruit).  Please remember to check that something is safe (if you are not sure) before cooking and eating it….. With the exception of Elderberries (you can buy Elder trees seperately from us at Sambucus nigra), all the plants that produce the berries in this recipe are likely to be in a pack of Conservation Hedge Mix hedging.

Ingredients

On average these will yield about 2kg of jelly
3lbs (1.4kg) crab apples, windfall apples or cooking apples
2lbs (900g) in total of blackberries, elderberries & sloes as available
2lbs (900g) in total of rowan berries, haws & rose hips as available
Juice of 1 lemon
Sugar

Instructions

Wash the apples, and if you are using cooking apples chop them roughly.
Wash and drain the blackberries, elderberries & sloes.
Wash and drain the rowan berries, haws & rose hips.
Put all the fruit except the rowan berry batch in a large, heavy- based pan with all bar a tablespoon of the lemon juice and add cold water to the level of the fruit.
In a separate pan put the rowan berry batch and the remaining lemon juice and cover with water.
Bring to the boil, then simmer gently until all the fruit is tender and well broken down – the rowan berry batch will take longer to soften.
Strain both pan fulls through a scalded jelly bag for at least 4 hours. Do not squeeze the bag.
Measure the strained juice and weigh out 1lb (450g) sugar for each pint (575/600ml) of juice.
Pour the juice back into the pan and heat very gently. Add the sugar and stir until completely dissolved.
Bring to the boil and cook rapidly until setting point is reached.
Skim, pot and seal in the usual way.
Enjoy


Creative Commons License

Hedgerow Jelly Recipe by
Charles Simon is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
http://blog.ashridgetrees.co.uk.