Summer’s creamiest, lemoniest cordial
Time works in strange and contradictory ways. Every year it seems as though we are waiting and waiting for summer to arrive. And yet the elderflowers seem to be in bloom far more often than once a year.
And it’s that time again now! When as I pass the door into the garden I catch a whiff of that creamy, lemony smell of the elder tree dipping down over the wall next to where I park my car. It’s unavoidable. And it means that every year I am stricken with guilt unless I do something constructive with them.
One year I made elderflower champagne, but the bottles exploded, and I haven’t been brave enough to try again. Several years I’ve made a batter and fried the flowers in it, then dusted them with sugar to make elderflower fritters – but it’s only Steve and me who’ll eat them. The children are most unimpressed, and turn up their noses.
This year, though, I’ve returned to that old favourite – it works for everyone, and doesn’t make stepping into the cold room feel like entering a war zone – elderflower cordial.
Together my daughter and I snipped about 15 heads of elderflower, and used this recipe:
1.5kg granulated sugar
50g citric acid (available from the chemist’s in a very medical-looking box that says ‘for culinary use’ on it)
3 limes ( a change from our usual lemons)
900ml water
15 heads of elderflower
Simmer the sugar and water together until the sugar is completely dissolved, then bring it to the boil, covered. Once it’s boiled, remove it from the heat, then drop in your carefully washed elderflowers, peeled and sliced limes (together with the peel), and citric acid, and stir. Leave, covered, to steep for 24 hours, then strain through a colander lined with a tea-towel into sterilised bottles.
Dilute the cordial when drinking – we love it with fizzy water best, and you’ll find the flavour is astonishingly strong. A proper taste of summer.
Seed potatoes are the first veg in at Ponden
When I was about 38 I read a magazine article that claimed everyone past the age of 40 got interested in gardening. Everyone. Not me, mate, I thought. I will never be interested in gardening, and that is a fact.
I still can’t claim to be interested in herbaceous borders or hardy perennials, but I must admit I have been doing a bit of daydreaming recently about growing vegetables. To the point where I’m actually doing something about it. Mainly because they are free food. It just makes good economic sense that if you have a spare patch of soil, you could be raising things in it to feed your family at next to no cost. Plus I remember the glorious smell of my grandfather’s homegrown tomatoes and runner beans. And maybe old age is catching up with me after all…
So now the thinking has finally converted into some real action. I bought two packets of seed potatoes yesterday, and today I actually found a spade, got myself out to the garden, dug up a long patch of flowerbed, and planted them, 20cm apart, as the instructions told said I should. According to the packet I’m right at the end of the time for planting, but fingers crossed they’ll still take.
I’ve chosen potatoes for my first foray into vegetable gardening purely because so many people have told me they are idiotproof – anyone can grow them. And planting them certainly seemed straightforward. I’ll let you know how they go on.
As an added bonus, while I was out there I discovered a lavish crop of wild garlic, which is definitely something I’m interested in using in the kitchen. My 14-year-old daughter recently ate at the luxurious Cliffemount Hotel, in Runswick Bay, North Yorkshire, while she was out for the day with her friend Tilly – and ordered a soup she raved about for days afterwards – spinach and wild garlic.
I have spinach. Now I have wild garlic. Watch this space…
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