Gorse

Standing on a West Cork hillside, with a southerly whipping your ankles, and you have one of those double takes, one of those: is-this-really-happening? moments.

It’s the gorse.

It’s not that gorse smells of coconuts. It's more than that: gorse actually smells of coconut flavoured sun tan lotion! Amidst all the other sights and sounds and smells of a chilly Irish spring, its sunlight colour, and sandy beach aroma, can be quiet unsettling.

But how to capture that coconut essence in taste? I’d been warned that it doesn’t really happen once you get the flowers back into the kitchen. So, in an effort to catch that sunshine, I poured boiling syrup over the just picked flowers, and also distilled more flowers into gorse water, to try and capture the tropics.

After a night steeping, we sieved the syrup to make a gorse cordial. Then, we tasted it. The first taste was from the citrus fruits in the syrup, next came a green almond sort of flavour. And then – suddenly – there is was, delicately in the background of the drink, unmistakeably coconut.

Gorse Cordial

300g sugar
1 lt water
150g gorse flowers
juice and rind of 1 orange and 1 lemon

Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water for about 10 minutes. Grate and squeeze the orange and lemon into a bowl of the flowers. Pour over the boiling syrup and leave overnight. The next day sieve through muslin. Use as a syrup or dilute as a cordial for drinking.



Gorse Ice Cream

This comes from an idea by @DarrenBradley, who is a cook in Donegal who we admire greatly. Darren's clever trick is to add coconut milk to the ice cream, re-enforcing the original gorse flavour. I have adapted it to use the gorse syrup. Garnish the ice cream with the gorse petals, which are edible.
You can read Darren's original recipe here.

250ml double cream
200ml coconut milk
200ml gorse cordial
50g golden caster sugar
5ml vanilla essence
3 egg yolks

Heat the cream, coconut milk and gorse cordial until just below boiling point. Beat the eggs with the sugar and stir into the hot milk mixture, stirring all the time over a low heat until the eggs reach the point where they coat the back of the spoon.

Run through in an ice cream machine, and then freeze until set.


Gorse Flower Water

You can make flower water by placing a brick in a saucepan and surrounding with flower petals. Pour in water, almost to cover the brick, then place a bowl on top. Invert the lid of your saucepan and turn on the heat. As the water comes to the boil place some ice cubes on top of the lid. Distillation then happens as the water from the flowers hits the cold lid, condenses and falls back into the bowl.

Flower water lasts about 18 months. Keep it in the fridge. Floral waters are natural toners, hair rinses, mouth washes, insect repellents, decongestants and refreshers. I looked up gorse flower water on the Bach Flower remedy site, and was struck by the fact that gorse can be administered to people who are floundering in an “extreme negative state”. Gorse apparently has the properties to restore hope.

So - if you know anyone who has been hit hard by this recession, who has lost hope, take them for a walk on an Irish hillside, and who knows, that weird Hawaii-in-Ireland double take might help them more than you can both imagine.

Gorse flowers are in season from now until early May. The coconut flavour will become more pronounced with a little more sunshine.