The gooseberries are swelling nicely and early varieties are already in the shops. The fresh fruit is not to everyone's taste, but is delicious when used in jam or chutney. Why not try some of these recipies:

 

Gooseberry and Lemon Verbena Cordial
A thirst quenching way of using up a glut of gooseberries.

Gooseberry Chutney
A basic gooseberry chutney.

Green Gooseberry Jam
Quite simply the best thing to do with gooseberries.
An excellent jam for breakfast, tangy yet sweet, a lovely orange colour, can be flavoured with the addition of elderflowers.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Cordial
A combination of early summer flavours in a cordial. Uses elderflower cordial.

 

 

The elderflowers are bursting out of the hedgerows at this time of year. The best time to pick them is on a dry, warm day when the blooms are newly open and white. Try to find a bush that is away from a main road (to avoid exhaust fumes), and remember to keep to public footpaths. Their fragrance gives a wonderful summery flavour to the following recipes.

 

Elderflower and Rhubarb Jam
A combination of the best two early summer flavours.

Elderflower Cordial
A special drink ready in time for the summer, great served with fizzy wine.

Elderflower Cordial With Citric Acid
A tart, refreshing version of the classic elderflower cordial recipe.

Green Gooseberry Jam
Quite simply the best thing to do with gooseberries.
An excellent jam for breakfast, tangy yet sweet, a lovely orange colour, can be flavoured with the addition of elderflowers.

 

 

Gooseberry and Elderflower Cordial
A combination of early summer flavours in a cordial. Uses elderflower cordial.

 

 

The elderflowers are really starting to look good in the hedgerows and this is a perfect way to use their subtle flavour with that other early summer favorite rhubarb. You don't need may umbrels of flowers to get a hint of the taste, and you can use any extra to make elderflower cordial.

This recipe is adapted from the one in Edible Wild Plants & Herbs by Pamela Michael.

See here for the elderflower and rhubarb jam recipe in more detail.

Recipe Costs

£0.00 6 large elderflower heads (you can get dried ones on ebay, but I haven't tried them)
£0.00 1.5 kg rhubarb (£9.33 if bought)
£1.40 1.5 kg sugar
£0.35 1 lemon

£1.75 Total (£11.08 if buying the rhubarb)
£0.87 per kg of jam (£5.54 if buying the rhubarb - Elderflower and rhubarb jam costs £9.26 a kg at gallowaylodge.co.uk)

My elderflowers were on the small side, so I used about 15, they are tied up in a muslin bag and put in the bottom of a large bowl.

The rhubarb is chopped up and placed on top of the elderflowers.

The sugar is sprinkled onto the rhubarb and the bowl shook to make sure it settles down. This recipe relies on the sugar drawing out the juice from the rhubarb by osmosis, the only other liquid added is the juice of a lemon. As a result the jam should have an intense flavour. I used a glass bowl so I could see just how much juice was coming out, I've used a similar process before when making marrow and ginger jam and am always surprised how well it works.

Afetr 12 hours the rhubarb is starting to give up it's juice, it's given a quick stir and then covered back up again.

After another 12 hours the rhubarb is swimming in it's own juice, it's heated up slowly to dissolve all the remaining sugar, then returned to the bowl for another 12 hours.

Before the final cooking process the juice of a lemon is added, using my satisfyingly functional glass lemon squeezer.

The jam is cooked for about 45 minutes until it reaches setting point, then potted in steralised jars. I always find a jam funnel useful at this stage.

Recipe Timings

20 minutes Preparation
36 hours standing
45 minutes cooking
10 minutes bottling

Taste Test

It's surprising how so few elderflowers give such a distinctive taste to this jam. It's not overly sweet, which brings out the flavour of the rhubarb nicely.

Now is the time of year when rhubarb is readily available. Why not get the preserving pan out, celebrate this most English of vegetables, and try some of the following recipes:

 

Elderflower and Rhubarb Jam
A combination of the best two early summer flavours.

Rhubarb and Ginger Schnapps
A delicious summer drink, spiced up with a hint of ginger.

Rhubarb Schnapps
A special drink ready in time for the summer, great served with fizzy wine.

Rhubarb and Ginger Jam
A subtle tasting jam with crystallised ginger.

Rhubarb Chutney
Recipe for a rich dark chutney with apricots.

 

Rhubarb Relish
Make with maincrop rhubarb, good with curries, oily fish and cheese.

 

As the pickle and preserve website has been going for over a year now I thought it would be interesting to see what the most popular recipes have been amongst visitors.

So here goes the top five in ascending order:

At number 5, and very apt for this time of year is Rhubarb Chutney.

At number 4, well worth making yourself,  Pickled Onions.

At number 3, lovely on toast, Rhubarb and Ginger Jam.

At number 2, a modern classic, Red Onion Marmalade.

And the surprise entry at number 1, the perfect accompaniment to the nations favorite dish, Lime Pickle.

With 7500 views between them that's an awful lot of jars of preserve.....

image source kilmerhouse.com

I still had a bowlful of sloes standing in the kitchen, and since there is only so much sloe gin you can make (or drink), have looked around for another recipe using the hard little fruits.
Pamela Michael's Edible Wild Plants & Herbs, is the ideal book for this sort of thing as it goes into great detail about the many uses of various wild plants.

One concern with using sloes to make preserves is how to deal with the stones, having had several messy experiences picking plum stones out of stewed plums I wasn't keen to repeat this with the smaller sloe stones. The basis of this jam is a pulp of apples and sloes, which means you conveniently sieve out the troublesome stones.

A word of warning, this is one time that apron hanging behind the kitchen door really should be worn as  sloe juice makes a good indelible ink if you ever need to write your name inside your clothes.

See here for the sloe and apple jam recipe.

Recipe Costs

£2.75 500g sloes (equivalent cost on ebay, mine were free)
£1.34 1kg cooking apples (equivalent cost, mine were free)
£ 1.40 1.5kg granulated sugar
£5.49 Total (£1.40 without buying the sloes and apples )
£2.74 per kg of jam(£0.70 per kg without buying the sloes and apples- 10% of the cost of equivalent at qualitypreserves.com)

The fruit is very quick to prepare as the apples are chopped roughly leaving the skin and core to add to the flavour. After 20 minutes of simmering the pulp is ready to be sieved.

This is the messy bit, I ended up forcing the remainder of the fruit through a colander with my hands in an attempt to extract as much pulp as possible. This took a surprising amount of time, partly as care needs to be taken when dealing with quantities of hot fruit pulp.

The resulting pulp was returned to the preserving pan..

..and sugar added..

..resulting in a rich dark jam a few minutes later.

Recipe Timings
15 mins preparation
30 mins simmering
30 mins pulping
15 mins boiling
15 mins potting

Taste Test

This jam still has a slight bitterness from the sloes, but has a nice smooth texture.

I've been looking around for inspiration on how to label jars of jam and chutney and came across these lovely old polish jam labels.

More examples can be found at www.pantuniestal.com

Blackberry and apple jam is probably the favorite jam in this household, I'm in trouble if a batch doesn't get made every year. Not that it's a chore, as picking blackberries is a totally pleasurable way to pass the time, and making the glossy deep coloured jam one of the best things to do with the fruit.

We planted several blackberry canes in our boundary hedge, at the same time as the hedging plants. They are a thornless variety, which is a great idea, although not so if you plant them in a predominantly hawthorn hedge.  I try and use about half of this variety and half from the local hedgerows, the difference in size, flavour and texture between even just the canes round our local lanes is quite noticeable. Rather than go down the single variety route I feel this is one case where a blend of berries works well, adding interest to the finished jam. Anyway, I could never get enough of one variety to make it worth while.

The best place locally to pick blackberries in round the edge of the village cricket pitch, the same place that provides elderflowers, the apples came from my in laws back garden.

I use a trusted recipe from the "Good Housekeeping" Cookery Book

See here for the blackberry and apple jam recipe.

Recipe Costs

£5.89 1.8kg blackberries (this is a PYO cost, tesco would set you back £23.89, mine were free)
£0.94 700g cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced (equivalent cost, mine were free)
£2.51 2.7kg sugar
£0.20 knob of butter
£9.54 Total (£2.71 without buying the fruit)
£2.12 per kg jam (25% of the cost of similar jam at ocado), £0.60 without buying the fruit (7% of the cost of similar jam at ocado)

Peeled and chopped Bramley apples.

Adding sugar to the mashed apples partially cooked blackberries, the white and rich purple is an amazing contrast of colours.

After adding sugar before boiling for ten minutes, a knob of butter is added at this stage which makes the jam more glossy in appearance.

After boiling for ten minutes the apple has broken down and the jam thickened.

Potting in steralised jars with greaseproof paper discs to stop any mould developing. I usually steralise the jars by washing them well, then without touching the insides heating them to about 100 degrees centigrade in the oven, I let them cool a bit before adding the jam. I soak the lids in boiling water for 10 minutes and then shake them dry, again without touching the insides.

The finished jam is a delicious colour and thankfully ready to eat straight away, best on toast at any time of the day.

Recipe Timings

15 mins preparation
30 mins cooking
15 mins potting

Taste Test

Can't beat it really, tastes great. We have a variety of small hard blackberries in the hedges near us that survive the cooking and add a bit of texture.

The variety we have in the garden develops beautiful red markings as the fruit ripen. The gooseberry is to my mind one of the quintessentially English summer tastes along with rhubarb and elderflower. I've not got a very sweet tooth and prefer the sharpness to something like a strawberry or raspberry.

I dug out a recipe from the classic Mary Berry's complete television cookbook, a well thumbed 26 years old this year. TV cooking was cutting edge in those days, I doubt anyone would have foreseen the range and styles of programs we have now.

See here for the gooseberry jam recipe.

Recipe Costs

£5.07 1kg gooseberries (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£1.21 1.3kg granulated sugar
£6.28 Total (£1.21 without buying the gooseberries)
£2.73 per kg of jam (£0.52 without buying the rhubarb - 10% of the cost of equivalent at ocado)

This is a wonderfully simple and quick recipe.

Topping and tailing the gooseberries was the most time consuming part, made easier by having a decent sharp knife. Funny things gooseberries, you could get a bit squeamish about cutting into them if you thought too hard about it.

This is a good volume of jam to make, anything more and you're risking it taking for ever to heat up to setting point. It's never a good idea to overfill a preserving pan, better to cook a large volume in two smaller batches.
At the same time as adding the sugar I put in 250ml of elderflower cordial, Mary Berry had suggested adding 12 elderflower heads in muslin, but we're a bit late in the season for that so a good splash of cordial has to suffice.

Still some lumps of fruit left in this picture, along with a lot of seeds. One of the nice things about this jam is how the gooseberry skins disintegrate when cooking, so there is no need to laboriously peel them. The seeds look wonderful in the finished jam.

Setting point was reached and tested for on a cold plate.

Not the best photo, but I think you can see the wrinkling. Amazing how the green gooseberries turn a lovely orange when cooked.

Recipe Timings

0.5hrs Preparation
0.5 hrs simmering
10 mins boiling to setting point
0.5 hr Potting

Taste Test

Excellent, just tangy enough to be a wake up call on breakfast toast, with the elderflower adding a sweet taste.

It's not clear if this rise has been  sparked by the recession, or a renewed interest in the benefits of growing your own and living the good life.

Interesting that Lakeland have seen a large rise in the sales of the novice friendly Jam Making Machine, maybe a sign that  a new batch of consumers are wanting the satisfaction of home made preserves. I wonder if it gets good results?

It's also great to hear that soft fruit growers are reporting bumper crops, definitely something I've noticed with the gooseberries in the garden,  I shall be making use of them imminently.