What's your most craved dessert?


That's the theme of the June Sugar High Friday challenge, hosted by SHF founder, Jennifer, on her blog, the Domestic Goddess. This one's taken me all month to narrow down.... holy guacamole - so many desserts, so little spare room inside my waistband! I finally settled on a cheesecake, one of those proper baked ones which are miles easier to do than their flavour would suggest... and I've teamed the basic recipe with some of my haul of wild cherries - another bumper year, possibly thanks to all the late spring rain? My wild ones were perhaps a little smaller and not quite as juicy as canned ones, but hey, they were free, fresh, organic and they tasted fabulous. My twist of originality is to make individual 'cheesecakelets' using a flexible silicon muffin tray. I think paper cake cases would also work, as the cheese mixture in this recipe seems firm enough before cooking. This would make them ideal for a midsummer's picnic: no messy cutting and they can be made in advance and stored for a day or so; add the topping just before serving or packing your picnic. This recipe made 8, although two got eaten before I could photograph them!

Wild Cherry Cheesecakelets


Ingredients - base:

75g plain digestive biscuits, 30g melted butter.
middle: 300g plain cream cheese, 1 egg, 30g golden cane cugar, 1 tablespoon plain flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.
topping: 300g pitted cherries (that's about 400g whole cherries), 1 tablespoon golden cane sugar, mint leaves.
Method: Preheat the oven to Gas 3/140C, pit the cherries and melt the butter. In a bowl, crush the biscuits to fine crumbs and add the melted butter.Mix until the crumbs are fully coated. Firmly press a small amount of crumb mixture into the bottom of the muffin tray or paper cases if using. Beat the cream cheese with the sugar and vanilla until smooth, then add the egg and flour and beat in until the mixture is firm and creamy. Place a dessertspoonful on top of the crumb base and smooth with the back of the spoon or a palette knife. Bake for around 40 minutes or until the edges turn lightly brown. Allow to cool then put in the fridge to set firm. To make the topping, put the sugar into a pan over a high heat and when it begins to melt and caramelise, add the pitted cherries. Cook for around 4 minutes until they start to release their juice; be careful not to overcook the cherries, or they'll collapse into a pulp. Allow to cool then strain the juice back into the pan and reduce it down over a gentle heat until it becomes thick and syrupy. Take the cheesecakelets out of the fridge about 20 minutes before serving and spoon over the cherry topping. Give the syrup a quick blast in the microwave or over a bain marie if it's set firm, then spoon over the cheesecakes and allow to set. Decorate with a small mint leaf and serve

On an errand into the depths of East Anglia's Fenland the other day, I came across vast quantities of one of my favourite summer eating greens, fat hen. The grey green leaves were at their absolute peak for picking: young, around 10cm high with very little stem and refreshed from some heavy rain the night before. It didn't take me long to fill a basket! Some for a salad and plenty more for cooking.
It's quite rare for me to find enough of one weed to serve as a single veg: in order to keep my foraging within the bounds of 21st century living ( short on time and living in an over populated country) my strategy is to gather a little of this and a little of that, reducing the distance I need to travel to find my wild food. so tonight's menu is: Fat hen pizza - I'll post the pic later!

Below: young fat hen nestling amongst stinging nettles

I found this yesterday - an online petition to get more fruit and nut trees planted in parks and public spaces. Seems sensible, free fruit with zero air miles, and fruit trees cost the same to maintain as the usual varieties we see in municipal plantings. You need to be a British citizen or resident to sign it.

Magic: mushrooms at last!

It's hard to remember that April was actually pretty pleasant weather wise, we've had so much rain recently. The wet is great when the sun comes out, but foraging can be tough going in heavy downpours. Increasingly, Nature dictates when and where I forage: rain makes low lying plant matter stick together, mushrooms go soggy, flowers droop or shut themselves up tight. My basket after a wet forage contains more than the usual haul of slugs and snails - yeuch. Why bother: the principle of least effort is a good one to follow!
But in between the storms, it's really quite warm and pleasant. Elderflowers continue to come, I notice the first signs of fruit set, next to a spray of green unopened buds, beside another flower head with trembling, creamy yellow pollen showers. 3 litres of cordial to date - the recipe is so simple, I can't resist making another batch!
St Georges mushrooms - traditionally an April treat - are beginning to show themselves. Maybe it's me and I've been too busy, but it seems as if this spring was the pits for wild 'shrooms. Happily, I gathered enough yesterday for breakfast this morning: St Georges on toast with last night's bottifara negra (Spanish black pudding) , Veggies, avert your eyes! :-)

Wild and Wet in Norfolk

So I should have known better than to book some quality outdoors time with the other half on a British bank holiday weekend. A walk in the countryside? No, a spot of camping was the order of the weekend.
Camping in a lovely 5 star campsite? Er no, wild camping: wild as in remote, in the woods sans mod cons. And rain. Plenty of it too! Still it was a chance to hang out together in the fresh air - literally, as we use a hammock and tarpaulin system for shelter.
Foraging was a mixed bag; to one side of the woods was a field full of baby lettuce, and a few small fat hen plants. The field margins were full of burdock, dandelion, nettle and dock. All a bit too mature for tender eating, and it's been very dry, so a lot of the plants were looking tough and chewy. They may have been ok in a survival situation, but it was a tad too far out of my comfort zone!
Better news on the other side of the wood, which was sandy heathland dotted with oak, hawthorn and rabbit holes: there was a simply astounding red tinge to the grass, which turned out to be the flowering stems of sheep sorrel- yay! Something good to eat! Further on I found some wild strawberry plants - not yet fruited, but noted for a return visit later on this year. Last but not least, a good quantity of very slippery slippery jacks (suillus luteus) They were delicious fried up with an onion and some wild garlic paste and eaten with slices of bread and butter, as we watched the the tree tops whipping around in the wind and listened to the hiss of raindrops on the fire... time to go home, methinks!

Elderflower Panna Cotta with a Strawberry Coulis

The subtle, indefinable taste of elderflower is a wonderful foil to the luxurious texture and muted flavour of panna cotta. I first came across the panna cotta recipe by Richard Phillips from www.uktv.co.uk and have since adapted it to intensify its floral flavours by using elderflower infused sugar: (a doddle to make; follow this link to find out how) The strawberry coulis adds a welcome dimension of acidity without overwhelming the elderflowers. Result: a dessert symphony with haunting descant notes of one of the UK’s most prolific, edible wild flowers… enjoy!

Serves 6 - 8

Preparation time: 25 minutes plus chilling – 4 to 6 hours

Ingredients

250ml fresh milk

250ml double cream

25g granulated elderflower infused sugar

2 large heads fresh elderflowers

1 sachet gelatine

For the coulis

300g fresh, ripe strawberries

3 tablespoons elderflower cordial

Squeeze of lemon juice to taste

Method

In a heavy based saucepan, mix the milk, cream and sugar.

Bring to a gentle simmer then remove from heat.

Shake the elderflowers to remove any insects, then place them, stalk side up, into the hot mixture. Leave to infuse for 10 minutes.

Remove the flower heads and re-heat gently, do not allow it to boil.

Add the gelatine to 50ml freshly boiled water and whisk well until the gelatine is dissolved.

Add this to milk and cream mixture. Stir briskly until the gelatine solution is fully incorporated, then pour into individual dishes, or a flexible silicon muffin tray.

Place in the fridge until set.

To make the coulis, simply blitz the strawberries and cordial for one minute with a blender.

Adjust the acidity with a little lemon juice to taste.

Pass the coulis through a wire mesh sieve.

Store chilled and bring it back to room temperature for 30 minutes before serving.

To serve:

Drizzle the coulis around the panna cotta and garnish with a scattering of fresh elderflower blossoms and a little elderflower sugar if desired before serving.

Beech, rain, mushrooms?
In just a couple of wet weeks, the garden has reached jungle proportions... everything is so.... green! The ground squelches most satisfyingly underfoot... Hooray for a bit of wet!

But a week after our return from France, I suddenly noticed the beech trees on my way to work had come into leaf. Delicious silky green foliage- a classic spring moment for me is standing under the canopy of delicate new leaves (ideally in the sunshine for best light effects) munching, basking and foraging: as in: 'one in the bag, one in the mouth, one for the pot, one for me...' lol

Beech leaves have such a short season - they're only edible while soft, and so far, I've only managed to do a couple of things with them... one is beech leaf noyau, a liqueur type of drink and the other - a sandwich made with good bread, a generous slathering of butter, packed with shredded beech leaves and seasoned lightly with salt and pepper. The arterially challenged may prefer olive oil to butter - it tastes just as good!
Mushooms have been dismal so far this year, but I have a good 'shroom feeling in my bones - all this rain plus a bit of sun: we should soon be seeing morels, (see the pic above) fairy ring champignons and St Georges around these parts...

So, it's end of April and miraculously my wild food experiences have leapt ahead to what I'm usually looking for in May - June.... That's because we're currently holed up in a lovely villa in Grasse France, enjoying 25C weather and a swimming pool.... :-)
This afternoon I went for a walk down the lane, the air was sweet with the scent of jasmine and elderflower... so I hopped over a wall and picked a few (elderflower) heads to fritter.... and made a mental note to do elderflower cordial and champagne when I get home.
Our friends here say it's been a wet and rainy start to Spring, so there's loads of wild greens to feast on.... Poppies... I love them! It's possible to make a scarily red cordial from the flower petals, though the flavour is a bit indistinct. On one of the old cultivation terraces behind the villa I found a big patch of very lush looking poppy plants, the greens make a good veg- I wilted them in pan and added them chopped to some rice and peas.

some of my plum harvest...clockwise from yellows:

Mirabelles, Cherry Plums and a variety of greengage, the 'Yellow Egg'

So it's been a busy old month of August and here we are in September - have to confess I feel a bit ashamed that I haven't blogged more frequently. What the hell - no idea if anyone's reading this, so it's really just a writing discipline for me :-)

So August. A plummy month if ever there was one. So far I have 40lbs of plum jam waiting to be labelled and then some for the storecupboard, the rest for sale at a couple of fairs I'm doing later in the month. I also made some fruit leathers, thanks to access to a food dehydrator - courtesy of my mate Dave. Fruit leathers are delicious, you simmer the fruit uncovered in a bit of water for as long as it takes to soften, mash it through a seive to get a fruit pulp, then spread the pulp thinly on cling film and pop in the dehydrator. After about 12 hours it has dried to a leathery texture, and is ready for eating or storing on sheets of greaseproof paper. Leathers are excellent trail snacks, bursting with fruity flavours. They keep for ages too.


Plums were ( still are actually) dripping from hedgerows all around here in all shapes, sizes and colours. My favourite has to be the cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera) round, smaller than a traditional plum, and red to yellow in colour. It has good acidity and is a decent size, so you can collect a good carrier bagful in no time at all. Mirabelles are also common, yellow cherry sized fruit, less acidic so I ate plenty while I was picking them...
It's been fairly wet this month, which is not great for the end of a late starting summer ( it was freezing cold and very wet in May) but on the plus side, loads of young nettles and chickweed are now sprouting and that's good news for wild food fans. Blackberries are off to a good start, although with lots of rain they need a couple of days of sunshine to convert all the water to sugars before they're worth collecting. I've also been harvesting elderberries but have to compete with the birds - they definitely have the upper hand as the best berries are high up.
It's also been amazing for fungi, warm and wet provide ideal weather conditions for most species: field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, fairy ring champignons are springing up almost daily in fields and along wood margins.
Yesterday I was out in some woods and found my second ever giant puffball in good eating condition. Cooked up with a little garlic and a slug of white wine it was fab.
September is looking good for nuts: beech and hazel seem to be having a productive year although the ever present grey squirrels usually get most of the hazelnuts before they've even turned brown.... And by the end of the month it will be time to start foraging for roots.

There is a legal issue with digging up plants - totally illegal here in the UK unless you have permission from land owners. Fortunately I was slack with the weeding so I have some good stands of dandelion which I kept flower free over the spring so as to concentrate the plant energy into leaves and roots. I also earthed up some of the dandelions on the veg patch, this encourages the lower leaves to blanch white and they become extremely palatable with very little bitterness. I'm also looking forward to some Burdock root chips from some seeds that I planted in my garden last summer.