Life up the Allotment
Around a month ago in one in my previous videos I mentioned an idea to make a cooking program where I share recipes and cook produce grown in my allotment. So this video is my little experiment, obviously the cooking series will be a little better filmed. I will set my little oven up outside and have a better script too 
But in the mean time I just wanted to share some cordial recipes using foraged sloe berries and cherry plums.
It’s recipe time and until my new website is up and running I’m afraid I’m having to write my recipes as blog posts. So here it is:
When my Dad found those little juicy plums whilst walking the dog I instantly turned to the ever so brilliant book by Alys Fowler called ‘the thrifty forager’. She confirmed that they were indeed cherry plums and was so kind as to share a tarte recipe on the opposite page. How could I ignore that, especially when it looked so delicious?! The recipe included a homemade pastry tart case, however I cheated and brought a sweet pastry case from the supermarket to save a bit of time. So here’s the recipe for the most delicious tarte in the whole world!
Heat the Milk in a saucepan, do not let it boil. In a bowl mix together the sugar with the 2 yolks until it becomes smooth and shiny. Add the cornflower and stir well. Lower the heat on the milk and add the sugary egg mixture, stirring constantly. It usually takes around 15 minutes for the creme to cook. It should become stiff and come away from the sides of the pan. Let it cool in the saucepan off the heat. Cover the pan with cling film to stop the creme drying up.
Wash the plums, half them and remove the stones. Spread the creme over the pastry and cover neatly with plums. Bake the tart at 180C for 15-20 minutes - the plums will become soft and slightly caramelised.
A homemade bee hotel has been on my to-do list for quite a while now, I was originally going to make one out of bamboo canes and then create a little wooden frame to put them inside. However, the inspirational world of social media has given me a much better idea and I just couldn’t wait to go out and pick some… Common Hogweed! Now I must confess I never knew anything about this plant before apart from that it lines countryside roads and looks a little like a large cow parsley. Infact the stems are hollow and make great homes for leaf cutter bees! So off I went on my bicycle to forage some large common hogweed stems and I managed to find the mother load down a little country lane in my village (and I made a note to go back and forage the elderberries too!)
I’m going to cut them down to around 6 inches in length and leave them in the shed to dry out. Alternatively you can wait until later in the year when the whole plant has dried before foraging the stems, I decided to let them dry off inside incase the plants rotted in the rain (and we are forecast a lot of that during the next week!) The first stage of my bee hotel is in process, now all I need to do is make a little wooden frame to hold the stems, add a pretty slate roof, and give it a lick of paint and then all those leaf cutter bees whizzing around the allotment should be happy.
Now whilst I was out collecting the common hogweed stems I decided to go and look at a tree which my Dad had told me about. He brought a little fruit home one day after walking the dog and after lots of research we came to the conclusion is was a cherry plum, I was so excited! We loaded up the common hogweed stems onto our bikes and cycled down to a set of garage lock ups in the village where the cherry plum tree was. I just so happened to have brought a little egg basket with me and we managed to fill it up to the brim with those juicy little plums. I noticed there were loads more higher up out of our reach so I made a note to come back with a ladder (and I managed to get another basket full!) I’ll be making some cherry plum jam and a tarte very soon so stayed tuned for recipes!
I have come to the conclusion that foraging is one the most fun things to do! It’s food… for free! I have never felt happier then returning home with a basket full of cherry plums and a bag full of common hogweed stems. It’s amazing that I’ve been living in this village all my life and never noticed all the elderflowers, plums, sloe berries and black berries that are dotted around. I’ll be off foraging next weekend for elderberries and blackberries, everything seems to be so early this year due to all the sunny weather we’ve been having. Not that I’m complaining, it just means more jam for the store cupboard and more yummy desserts
This was the first year I went foraging for elderflower and I had such a great time, as a matter of fact I went foraging for it on two separate occasions and came home with baskets full of the pretty white flower heads. I did go a little overboard with making the cordial and champagne, in the end I think I made about 50 bottles (not that I’m complaining!) I especially love the cordial mixed with lemonade, however I found out that there are a lot of other recipes that use cordial as an ingrediant including the strawberry and elderflower jam recipe I featured in a previous post. I also happened to chance upon this jelly recipe and I just couldn’t wait to try it, I am a huge lover of jelly and elderflower so it was a match made in heaven! I had never made jelly before and didn’t realise it was this easy. It was the most delcious jelly I have ever tasted, my new favourite dessert and I will definately be making it again!
Recipe:
The strawberry patch is going crazy! There are so many strawberries growing and an endless amount of big red juicy ones, if I’m being honest I’m getting a tad fed up with eating strawberries. So I came to conclusion that it was about time to dig out the jam making equipment and get making some preserves. I managed to collect a whopping 5.5 lbs of strawberries from both my raised beds, that would be more then enough for the two types of jams that I wanted to make; plain old strawberry jam and a new recipe; strawberry AND elderflower jam (two of my favourite things combined!)
Now I’ve made jam a few times and along the way I have collected some equipment like a large enamel jam pan, a thermometer, various funnels and lots of jam jars. The only problem I have is getting the right setting point, I’ve found that if I don’t rush and take my time to do the wrinkle test at different times during the making process then I can’t miss it!
I managed to make 3 large jars of plain strawberry jam as well as 2 small jars of the strawberry and elderflower jam. I just love strawberries and I love elderflower so I knew the recipe wouldn’t disappoint, unless I mucked it up of course. But I was very careful and stopped the process at the right setting point so the jam turned out perfect, and it tasted delicious too! I think what makes it extra special is the fact that I used homegrown strawberries freshly picked from my allotment and elderflower cordial which I had previously made from foraged elderflower. I will definitely be making some more of this jam once more strawberries turn red in my little patch, that’s for sure
Here’s the recipe for my strawberry and elderflower jam, you can simply double the ingredients if you want more jam (which I recommend as it’s so tasty!)
Recipe:
Prep and cooking time; 45 minutes.
Put the strawberries and apple in a saucepan or jam pan, add the sugar and stir it up. Heat the pan on low until the fruits start to get juicy and the sugar becomes wet. Add the elderflower cordial. Now turn up the heat to medium until it becomes a rolling boil, do not stir from this point on. Set the timer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat after 15 minutes and test a teaspoon on a cold saucer for the wrinkle test (Let the jam cool and then move your finger through the centre of the jam, if it wrinkles and leaves a track then the jam has set and it is ready) Let the jam cool down and then stir in the lemon juice. Transfer to a jam jar and allow to cool in a dark place. Once opened keep refrigerated.
I absolutely love elderflower and when I drank the last of my shop brought and highly expensive cordial I decided that it would be far more satisfying to make my own. Now I have never foraged for elderflower before but after getting some advice and looking at lots of photograhs of the plant I decided to hop on my bicycle to fill my trailer up with elderflower. When travelling in my car down a country lane I passed lots of elderflower bushes, it was a 10 minute bicycle ride from my house so I headed that way to forage what I could. It looks like someone had beat me to it this year but I managed to use my height as an advantage and came home with a basket full of atleast 40 elderflower heads.
I decided to try and make some elderflower champagne aswell so as soon as I got home I got started by boiling 8 litres of water (which took forever!) I then put the sugar, boiling water, lemons, elderflower and the white wine vinegar into a large fermenting bin and its currently sitting in the kitchen waiting for the next stage.
I am going to tackle the cordial tonight, I was far too tired to start it last night as I only managed to sit down and relax at 11 o’clock at night! It was a super busy day but I managed to make some cages for my two strawberry beds with a lot of help from my amazing Dad. I’ll be taking them up to the allotment later today and hopefully that will protect my strawberries from both the birds and the mice that keep nibbling all my fat red strawberries.
It is that time of year when there is just so much to do, everything is growing including the weeds so it will be nice to relax in the Summer with a glass of elderflower champagne or cordial!
I did it! It took me about a month but I finally found some hazel for my allotment archway, Huzzah! It’s locally sourced from the New Forest by a lovely fellow called Dave Dibden and he was ever so kind enough to invite me to the area where he coppices so I could pick out the pieces that I wanted for my archway. We settled on 10 thick pieces of hazel which are roughly 9 foot tall, these will become the 5 sturdy uprights on each side of my archway and they should last longer then the thinner hazel poles. I also picked up 8 poles which will be placed inbetween each sturdy upright so that the beans and sweet peas have more poles to climb up on. Aswell as the side poles I gathered lots of thinner hazel to weave through the uprights to make it structurally sound and also 5 bendy hazel rods to create the hoops which will attach to the 5 main thicker uprights to create the actual archway over my head (I know that probably makes no sense at all so I put together a little drawing of what I am hoping my archway will look like at the end!)
Now that I have my hazel I am excited and very eager to get started on the archway, the weather on the other hand has other ideas. Last week was filled with glorious sunshine and it seems this weekend is going to be a complete and utter wash out! However, it does give me time to get organised and to look at some tutorials and videos on how to use hazel and to manipulate it into shapes and curves. These particular photographs in particular have inspired me greatly. I love the rustic and almost wild look to the archways and how they blend so well into the garden.
I don’t want my archway to be neat and straight, I want it to have character and charm and I especially want that cottage garden, rustic look! It does however, have to be structurally sound, I am going to be growing sweet peas, borlotto beans AND mini pumpkins on it so it will need to withstand a certain amount of weight. Also due to my tallness (I am 6ft) I would ideally like my archway to be tall enough so that I can walk through it without knocking my head on the climbing baby pumpkins. Oh dear.. this has got me even more excited and I am raring to go, I am tempted to get out the old waterproofs and brave the rain!
I would like to say a huge thank you to Dave for providing me with the perfect hazel and some inspiration and tips. I am now a complete hazel addict and plan on creating some hoop cloches to go over my strawberry beds, which means another trip to the forest is in order
I decided to take a well earned day off from allotment duties today, even though my shed needs painting, my strawberry runners need planting and I need to get some broad beans in the ground! I did however, go foraging for the first time in my entire 24 years of life and I loved every second of it. The prize was indeed, sloe berries, and we were lucky to get a trug full of the little gems even though the bushes had nearly been stripped bare (my tallness came in handy today!) The plan is to make sloe gin and we have just over 1.2kg, which makes 6 bottles of the stuff, but I can assure you I will not be drinking 6 bottles of sloe gin! Some lucky people will be getting a bottle for christmas, and maybe we will keep a couple of bottles stashed away for winter drinks
After foraging for nearly 2 hours we popped over to our little village church up the road to lay some flowers down on my grandparents grave (the flowers included cabbages would you believe!)
I absolutely love this church, it is so small and yet beautiful and very very old. It has been there since the Domesday book was compiled I’ll have you know.
On our way out the sky blessed us with a lovely rainbow, the perfect ending to the day I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend too xx