Autumn Hedgerow Fruit

I’ve spent the weekend trying to bottle up what remains of summer.

First port of call was the roadside. The lanes around here are teeming hedgerows that, throughout the year give us nettles, wild garlic, meadowsweet, verbena, honeysuckle, water mint, hazelnuts, elderflower, mushrooms, on and on it goes. Each year we discover more. Right now there are very few elderberries, and diminishing rowans, but plenty enough hips, haws and sloes.

A hedgerow is more than just food for us, it provides song posts for our birds, and the dense base and tall trees support butterflies, insects, badgers, foxes and quite a few feral cats. John and I often cycle through them and inevitably dismount when something catches our eye, or when a song call needs identifying.

Our hedgerows run beside a river, known as Four-Mile-Water, and beside it, we find plants that tolerate the dry soil under overhanging trees, others that prefer the wet marshes that are never too far away. We pick flowers here throughout the year, pink ragged Robin, white oxalis and yellow dandelions, which in themselves provide food.

On an autumn day the light is dappled, and it feels good to be alive.

We picked our sloes, haws, hips and a few rowans. The hips were the easiest to collect, we got enough to make rosehip syrup, and enough to put in the sweet hedgefruit ketchup, where we paired them with the other berries. Sloes were plentiful too, so we also made sloe gin.

Then to the garden, which is slightly sadder than the land around us. We never seem to get a great crop of anything, unless you count unripened tomatoes. On the advice of our friend Caitlin Ruth, I set to make green tomato chilli ketchup – and honestly, I’ll never complain about green tomatoes again. This sauce is addictive: part ketchup, part cooked salsa, part sludgy Tabasco, it would go with anything and our larder is full again.

Hedgefruit Ketchup

The colours of this mixture make your heart sing, especially the London bus red of the rowans. When made, the ketchup tastes a bit like a spicy cranberry sauce. If there’s any left, we’ll certainly use it for Christmas dinner. But I suspect it might all be gone by then.

1kg hedgerow fruit (haws, hips, rowans, elderberries, sloes, or any combination)
600ml white wine or cider vinegar
250g sugar
salt and black pepper

Remove most of the stalks from the fruit and rinse in cold water. Place them in a large pan with the vinegar and add 600ml water. Cook for about an hour, until the fruit softens and separates from its pips and seeds. Pass through a food mill, or rub through a medium sieve.

Discard the seeds and bits, and put the fruity mixture back into the clean pan. Add the sugar and season well. Bring to the boil and cook for about ten minutes. Pour into sterilised jars. This amount makes three large ones.


Rosehip Syrup

This syrup is loved by my family, who dilute it in water, and swear it tastes like their favourite goji berry juice. We like to have it with yogurt or porridge.

1kg rosehips
1.2kg sugar

Destalk the hips, and chop them in a food processor. Put 3l of water on the heat and add the hips to the water as it comes to the boil. Bring back to the boil and then take off the heat. Leave the fruit sitting overnight in the water.

The next day, strain the fruit through a muslin bag, as if you were making jelly. Let it sit until all the liquid has dripped out, and then discard the fruit. Place the liquid back in the saucepan and add the sugar. Bring the mixture to the boil and boil for about five minutes, then bottle into sterilised bottles.


Green Tomato Chilli Ketchup

6kg green tomatoes
4 onions, skinned and roughly chopped
3 green peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
200g sugar
4 red chillis
400ml white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon dry mustard
2 sticks cinnamon
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
5 whole allspice berries
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
the juice of 4 limes

Clean and chop all the ingredients and add everything to a large saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil and switch off the heat. Leave overnight. (You can skip this process if you like, but I think it adds to the flavour). The next morning simmer the mixture on a low boil for approximately 1.5 hours, until everything turns to pulp.

Sieve or pass through a food mill. The mixture will be pulpy, and contain chilli seeds. If you object to the seeds – and I don’t see why you should – then use a finer sieve. Bottle in sterilised kilner jars, and place the jars in a large pot of boiling water to cover. Boil the jars for approximately half an hour, which will seal them, and allow you to keep them on a shelf all winter.

Sloe Gin

This technique was given to us by Ally Raftery from Mount Vernon in County Clare.

Take 1 litre of gin and drink half of it. Cut or prick the sloes and drop into half empty bottle until they displace the remaining gin to near the top. Add 150g sugar. Turn or agitate the bottle daily for 1 week, then weekly for 1 or 2 months. At this point remove the sloes and it is ready to drink. Even better if kept till next winter.