Brewing Britain is a surprisingly good book. I say that because I didn’t expect a book on such a limited field to be so hard to put down – I’ve read similar books on wine and found them to be a great cure for insomnia, so really didn’t expect to be so drawn in.
Gin is basically vodka or any other neutral spirit flavoured with botanicals, of which juniper is the predominant flavour – hence the name – but everything else is left up to the imagination.
When I was young my father used to take us along the side of a disused railway track not too far from the terraced house where we lived. The experience stuck in my head; we were collecting our own food and it was delicious, messy and fun.
I’ve recently hit on to a local foraging secret; near to our house is a nature reserve, the entrance to which is made by a tree lined grass path. Visit at the wrong time of year and they are inconspicuous enough, but at this time of year they’re full with an abundance of green, yellow, red and purple plums.
Elderflower syrup is delightfully fragrant and will help make summer last all the way through winter.
The smell and taste of this jelly is pure turkish delight, and the recipe requires nothing more than roses, water and sugar.
The smell and flavour of wild garlic is sweeter and less harsh than that of farmed garlic. The bulbs are much smaller but the leaves more tender, therefore it is the leaves that are generally picked.
Horseradish is one of those hidden gems of foraging, growing in among the weeds on practically every grass verge in the country. This home-made horseradish sauce blows the mild shop bought varieties out of the water!
The fantastic weather recently has meant we’ve been able to go out and start foraging early. There’s not an awful lot above ground level in…
We’ve not foraged for dandelions before but decided to give it a go this year and I’m sure I don’t have to explain to anybody what they look like or where to find them. Every child knows how to tell the time using “dandelion clocks”, and most people are familiar with the story that dandelions can make you wee the bed (they are after all known in French as “pis-en-lit” – “*** the bed” for the rest of us). And who hasn’t drank Dandelion and Burdock?