Late spring bring elderflowers in June

One of the things I find frustrating when I flick through preserving recipe books is when a recipe requires ingredients that are not available at the same time when growing your own. Blackcurrant and apple may be a classic combination but I do not have apples ready when the blackcurrants are out. I saw a recipe the other day for a jam using rhubarb and apple. Fail! There are about 4 months between these two ingredients (at least in my world!).  Fortunately, with the use of the freezer it is possible for me to freeze some blackcurrants to use when the apples are ready and so I do make Blackcurrant & Apple Jam.

Another classic and delicious combination that requires the intervention of the freezer is gooseberry and elderflower. These two seem to miss each other by a matter of days, with the elderflowers finishing by the end of May or early June and the gooseberries ripening sometime from mid June to July. So rather than risking missing that special moment when both are available (although arguably not at their best), I pick the elderflowers in May and freeze them until the gooseberries are good and plump. Having said that, with the late spring this year the elderflowers have only appeared since the arrival of the warmer weather in June. And the gooseberries are already forming so maybe, just maybe, this will be the year when the two occur at the same time!

I don't grow elderflowers myself but they feature frequently in the hedgerows and municipal planting of Milton Keynes. We pass many bushes on the school run each morning in fact. Once you have your eye in you'll spot them all over the place. Although it may not be your eyes that notice them first, as the heavy scent is often so strong that your nose lets you know too.

There are other whitish cream blossom flowers out at the same time so if you do decide to collect elderflowers please make sure you know what you are doing. The result really won't be the same if you collect the wrong flowers and I guess there is a possibility you may poison yourself! Below is a photo of a blossom that isn't elderflower.

Elderflowers grow on shrub or tree sized plants and have an umbrella shaped blossom made up of numerous tiny cream flowers. The leaves are typical leaf shaped, fairly large and grow in collections of 5 or 7 leaves on one stem. If you think you have found the elderflower then smell it. It should have a lovely strong sweet perfume. If it has no perfume or stinks like sweaty donkeys then forget it! Below is a photo of what you are looking for.

Most recipes call for 20 large flower heads so aim to collect at least that many. They can be snapped off with sharp fingernails or snipped off with scissors. Back home, give them a good shake to remove any bugs. You may also wish to wash them. I always use my elderflowers in recipes as a flavouring so they usually get strained out of the finished product. This means there is no need to fiddle around with snipping each flower from the head. They can be used fresh or frozen. If freezing them, pack them into freezer bags, squash out as much air as possible and seal then pop them into the freezer until needed. They will probably go brown on thawing but they will retain their flavour and this is the key thing. They can be used from frozen to flavour jams and desserts as well as to make things such as elderflower cordial.

Elderflower cordial makes a lovely summer drink and is a nice non-alcoholic drink to serve at garden parties and barbeques. At this time of year, I make up a 2 litre bottle with elderflower cordial and a mixture of chilled still and sparkling water to make a slightly sparkling non-alcoholic drink to take to an event instead of a bottle of wine. It goes down well and is suitable for all. A couple of weeks ago a boy about 12 years old decided to give my sparkling elderflower drink ago and liked it so he came up to me and asked what elderflower were. Not only was it a flavour he'd not tried before but he didn't even realise that the flowers themselves were growing in the street in which he lived.

Usually at this point in June you would have missed the best of the elderflowers but they are just coming into their prime so make the most of it and make some elderflower cordial.  It is dead easy and tastes delicious. As well as diluting it to make a drink you can use it to flavour other things such as butter icing for fairy cakes, yoghurt or panna cotta. Whatever you decide, if you want to use elderflowers then get out there and pick some now because before you know it they’ll be gone for another year. And, even if you don't want to make anything then go out there and find some elderflowers and have a good smell - it is a beautiful scent. Better still, take children with you and teach them how to identify and use elderflowers so that we don't lose the art of foraging.

Elderflower Cordial (makes about 1.4 litres)

2lb 4 oz (1kg) sugar
1½ pints (900ml) boiling water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime juice
about 15 large elder flower heads
1 lemon, sliced
1 lime, sliced

Put the sugar in a non-metallic bowl with the boiling water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon and lime juices. Wash and flick dry the elder flower heads then snip off the flowers into the bowl. Add the sliced lemon and lime. Stir then cover the bowl with Clingfilm and leave to stand for 24 hours. Scald a jelly bag and drain the mixture through it into a clean bowl. Funnel into sterile bottles then refrigerate. Dilute to taste with still or fizzy water. Will keep in the refrigerator for about 3 months.

Steak & Ale Pie

I don't know if you have ever played a Mr and Mrs type game where you have to see whether you can guess what your spouse gave as the answer to questions about themselves. Despite knowing my husband for 18 years, I'm not sure how many of these questions I would get right but one thing is for certain, if I was ever asked what he would choose off the menu in a restaurant I know the answer would be a fish dish. He, on the other hand, would know that I would always go for the meat pie.

I remember as a child giving the answer of meat pie in response to the question: what is your favourite food. In particular, it was my grandad's homemade steak pie that I adored. And my love of steak pie has continued into adulthood. So when I'm out and there is a steak pie on the menu I shall opt for it. Steak and Ale pie, as is so often offered in pubs, is equally as good an option, particularly when it is a dish of pie filling with a slab of puff pastry on top. Yum.

However, for a long time I have struggled to replicate such wondrous pies at home, much to my disappointment. Then, last week, I received my first order of a box of butcher's meat from a food box scheme. It contained a selection of meat that I was happy to receive but which I had not specifically chosen. Amongst this was a pound of casserole steak. Hmmm... I would rather casserole lamb if I'm honest so I pondered whether it was worth trying again with the elusive Steak & Ale Pie.

Having googled several recipes and blogs on the topic, I pulled together some ideas and set about making up my own recipe, using, of course, ale from the local Concrete Cow Brewery, and shallots from the garden. Several hours later, delicious smells wafted from the kitchen and my optimism grew. Despite the tempting smells, we were having chicken for dinner that night and the pies were destined for the freezer but later that week I retrieved a couple and we gave them a go.

So, this week when my butcher's box of meat arrived I was excited to see another batch of casserole steak inside for it meant a chance to restock my freezer with these yummy pies. Once again my kitchen smells delicious and I'm eagerly anticipating pie night.

Steak & Ale Pie (make 3)

500g casserole steak, diced
20g seasoned flour
65g pancetta or bacon lardons
100g finely chopped shallots
200ml ale
200ml beef stock
1 dessert spoon dark muscovado sugar
A dash of balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder (yes, really!)
Half a block of ready-made puff pastry

Preheat over to 160°C, 150°C fan, gas mark 2. Toss the steak in the flour then brown all over in a hot frying pan. Spoon into a casserole dish then add the pancetta/bacon and shallots to the pan to brown. Add these to the casserole dish then put the remaining ingredients (except the pastry) into the frying pan. Stir, and scrape the bottom of the pan, until hot. Pour the liquid over the steak and place a lid on the casserole dish. Cook, covered for 2 hours then uncover and cook for a further 30 minutes until thick. Spoon about 150g of pie filling into suitable ovenproof contains/dishes and cover each one with a lid of puff pastry. It should make about 3 pies. Glaze the pastry with egg or milk and make a couple of steam holes in them. Freeze until required. Cook from thawed for 20-25 minutes at 190°C, gas 5, until the pastry is puffed and golden. Serve hot with potatoes and vegetables.

Meat & Potato Pie

My husband is from the north and from the sort of poor background where they used to eat corned beef hash for dinner and the corned beef was so heavily diluted by the potato that it only appeared as the occasional pink thread. Coming from such a background, he prefers to eat Meat & Potato Pie - with those made by Hollands being a particular favourite. So he requested I padded his pie out with potatoes. To do this, I took 150g of the pie filling out once cooked and added it to 350g of finely diced, boiled potatoes. This I then made into 3 individual pies with a puff pastry lid.

Mushroom Stroganoff

When my daughters were in their first school, mushroom stroganoff was offered on the hot dinner menu and my youngest particularly liked it. However, for years now they have been in a school where this isn't on the lunchtime menu and she misses it. I have looked around for a suitable recipe so I could make it at home but they all seem to contain white wine, which I'm pretty sure a dinner in a primary school wouldn't have done. Anyway, recently I came across a recipe that didn't include wine so I thought I would give it a go.

Last week my husband announced that he would like to eat less meat each week so it seemed like a good time to dig out that mushroom stroganoff recipe. However, he finds diary products difficult to digest so I thought it would be best to substitute the suggested soured cream for soya cream. It also called for Worcester sauce (or vegetarian alternative). Well, then, that could mean only one thing... my homemade Worcester sauce - or Moo-ster Sauce as I call it. And so, there we had it, not only a vegetarian meal but a vegan one too!

It was a very tasty and satisfying meal I'm pleased to say and one that sat so calmly on my husband's stomach that he asked if we could have a non-meat meal again the following day. Can't be bad.

Mushroom Stroganoff (serves 2)

Olive oil for frying
1 onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons paprika
1 garlic cloves, crushed (or a spoonful of Wild Garlic Pesto if you have it!)
300g mushrooms, sliced
Half pint vegetable stock
1 tablespoon Moo-ster Sauce
3 tablespoons of cream (or soya alternative)

Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan and fry the onions for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the paprika and garlic and cook for one more minute. Add the mushrooms and cook on high heat for 5 minutes. Pour in the stock and Moo-ster Sauce and bring back to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or so until the sauce reduces and thickens. Remove from the heat and stir through the cream. Serve with rice and fresh vegetables.

Wild Garlic

Itching to get the season started despite winter’s reluctance to release its grip, I was pleased to come across a recipe for wild garlic pesto during March. Wild garlic really comes into season from the end of January to April so it was something I could forage when everything in the hedgerow was still sleeping.

Wild garlic tends to grow in damp woodland, often under oak or beech trees. Indeed, it is something I've always come across at Easter when we go up to Lancashire to visit my mother-in-law, where it grows in abundance.  When walking through woodland, you become aware of it first because you suddenly find yourself enveloped in the garlicky aromas of the newly emerged leaves. Then, a few weeks after the leaves first appear, hundreds of tiny white flowers cover the woodland floor.

Knowing that it grows in abundance in Lancashire meant that I was somewhat surprised when I asked my husband where in Milton Keynes would be a good place for us to go and pick some. He looked at me blankly and said he didn't know. Then, searching around the internet, I discovered that wild garlic, or ransoms as they are also known, are in fact locally rare in Buckinghamshire. I’m not entirely sure why this should be the case – probably a matter of underlying geology and soil type. However, it gave me pause for thought. If it was rare, should I pick it at all?

Usually, the types of things I forage are in huge abundance – dandelions, elderflowers, blackberries and crabapples. Taking a few of these for my own use seems perfectly fine because it doesn’t make a dent in their supplies and there are plenty left for anyone else who would wish to forage too. I wouldn’t dream of taking anything if I thought it would spoil the enjoyment of others.

So what to do?

Well, I reviewed the law of foraging on the internet and discovered that I was within my rights to take any non-protected species of fungus, foliage, fruit or flower from open access, non-protected, land for non-commercial consumption. Indeed, it is a matter of common sense – you don’t take the whole plant and you don’t take all that is there.

With a bit more determined search I discovered that wild garlic does indeed grow in a small number of locations within Milton Keynes. One of these is a protected wildlife site so taking from there would not be acceptable but in the other areas the ransoms grow in abundance and to such an extent that it’s just not possible to pick the whole lot even if you wanted to. So, on Good Friday, we went for a family walk and filled two small sandwich bags with leaves (the 100g required for the recipe), and later I made the pesto. Then the next day, following the idea from the Tiny Bakery, I mixed a small amount of it into bread dough to make wild garlic bread – delicious. As only a small amount of pesto is required in any recipe, I think my jar full will last for quite a few weeks and I can confidently say that I left plenty still growing should anyone else get the urge to go foraging!

Wild Garlic Pesto

100g freshly picked wild garlic leaves
50g shallot
50g pine nuts
200 ml olive oil
50-60g finely grated Parmesan
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon sugar

Place the wild garlic, shallot and pine nuts in a food processor along with 150 ml oil. Blitz for about a minute until finely chopped. Fold in the grated cheese, salt and sugar. Pack into a clean jar, pressing down firmly with the back of a spoon then top up with oil so that it is fully submerged beneath the oil. Place in the refrigerator. It will keep for several weeks if you top up with a covering of oil each time you use it. It can also be frozen in small batches.

It can be used in any recipe where you might use garlic. A few teaspoonfuls can be added to bread dough at the knocking back stage to make wild garlic bread. Half a tablespoon mixed with cubed pieces of bread and then baked for 10 minutes make very tasty croutons. It can also be added to pizzas and pasta. This week I mixed a teaspoonful into the dough for our family-sized pizza, and tonight I mixed half a teaspoon into some mushrooms to make garlic mushrooms. It is proving to be a very handy ingredient.

Jam filled croissants

My girls like freshly baked croissants for their lazy Sunday breakfast. Well, who wouldn't?! I do have a recipe for making croissants in my bread making recipe book and wow, what a palaver that is! When reading it I have visions of French bakers getting up at 3am in order to ensure they can get them made in time for their customers' breakfast. Delia Smith once said that life is too short to stuff a mushroom. Well, I do stuff mushrooms but life is definitely too short to make croissants from scratch!

I feel the same way about making puff pastry. Short crust pastry, yes, I can and do make that because it is simple, quick and tastes better than the ready-made stuff. Puff pastry, no, it's time consuming and fiddly and doesn't turn out as nicely as the shop-bought stuff. So for this I turn to a block of Jus-Rol. It was whilst re-stocking the puff pastry that I stumbled upon the whole range of other stuff that Jus-Rol now do, including croissants.

I remember as a kid buying an apple turnover kit in a similar cardboard tube and how when I began to unwrap the tube it suddenly popped its seams under dough pressure. It amused me then and I figured it would amuse my two girls too. So now, Sunday breakfast usually starts with the popping of a tube of dough. Then, once opened, the girls just need to separate the six pieces of dough and roll each one up before placing them on a baking tray for cooking. 15 minutes later they are tucking into hot croissants.

Then last week we decided to experiment and this time, after separating the pieces of dough, they spread each one with some jam first then rolled them up.  15 minutes later they were tucking into hot jammy croissants! Can't be bad!

Unobtrustive Jam

Have you noticed that when jam is required in a recipe as a glue or a glaze, it is always Apricot Jam that is suggested. You know, for using to stick royal icing to a cake or as a glaze on sticky buns. The reasons for this are obvious, of course. Apricot Jam is unobtrusive in both flavour and colour. These are occasions when the jam is not the star, merely a helpful tool so something like Blackcurrant or even Raspberry Jam would just not be appropriate.

I don't make Apricot Jam due to a lack of apricots. I did plant an apricot tree about 3 years ago. I knew it would be a challenge to grow apricots because we don't really have the climate for it. For two years, it  blossomed nicely, formed little fruitlets and then all but about 2 of the fruits would fall off. Of course, the weather in recent years hasn't really been ideal for apricot growing but it matters little as last year my apricot tree died completely when the root stock suddenly started to grow instead of the grafted tree on top. Unfortunately, I didn't realise what was happening straight away and by the time I did, the vigorous root stock tree (whatever that was) had smothered the more delicate apricot graft part of the tree.

So, with no Apricot Jam to hand, what do I do when a recipe calls for it? Well, there are several jams that can be readily substituted as they too have a pleasant but not domineering flavour and little colour. The most obvious choice is Apple Jam, although Apple & Ginger Jam can also be used. Pear and Vanilla is also excellent. This week, when looking for a jam to glaze my batch of hot cross buns, I discovered that Greengage Jam can also fit the bill nicely. So, as sad as the loss of my apricot tree is, at least there are other jams willing to fill its role.

Hot Cross Buns (makes 12)

250ml (9 fl oz) milk at room temperature
1 egg, beaten
450g (1lb) strong white bread flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
55g (2oz) butter, diced
1 1/2 tsp yeast
110g (4 ox) mixed dried fruit
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp flour
Jam to glaze

Put the milk and egg into the bottom of the bread pan of a bread machine and cover with the flour. Place the spices, salt, sugar, butter and yeast in separate hollows in the flour. Set the machine to dough. 5 minutes before the kneading cycle finishes, add the dried fruit and lemon zest. Once finished, knock back the dough on a floured surface and cut into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and space out on a large, greased baking tray. Cover with greased clingfilm and leave to double in size. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 190°C, gas 5 and mix together the milk, flour and water and decant into a food bag. Snip the corner off the bag and pipe a cross on top each bun. Place in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked. Transfer the buns onto a wire rack to cool, but whilst still warm, brush each bun with a little warmed jam to glaze. Serve hot, cold or toasted with butter (and jam).

Belgium Buns for Red Nose Day

If you ever find yourself singing "Five currant buns in a bakers shop" what is the mental image of those buns? I realised the other day that my mental image is probably a Belgium bun and at the same time I realised I had never attempted to make them. A quick search on the internet confirmed that they are indeed very much like a Chelsea buns but with icing and a cherry on top. As I am no stranger to making Chelsea buns, I concluded that Belgium buns would also be fairly straightforward so I gave it a go.

Often when I make Chelsea buns I make a plain sweet bread then use some of my Jammy Cow mincemeat within the whirl to add the fruity yumminess. The Belgium bun recipes, however, often seem to feature a smearing of something like Lemon Curd with a scattering of currants within the whirl. Well, I don't make fruit curds. Two reasons: 1) I can't grow citrus fruit in Milton Keynes, 2) the use of egg within curds only give a 6 week shelf-life. I do, however, have a variety of lemon-themed marmalade in my cupboard right now so I thought a smearing of Honey & Lemon Marmalade would do the job nicely.

Having successfully made a batch of these cheery buns it occurred to me that with their silly cherry topping, they would make the ideal bake for a Red Nose cake stall so thought I should share my recipe. With Red Nose day a week away, stock up on some bread flour and some glace cherries and get ready to bake.


Belgium Buns (makes 12)

100ml milk
1 egg
225g strong white flour
½  tsp salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
55g butter, diced
1 tsp fast-action dried yeast
2-3 tbsp Lemon Marmalade (or curd)
A scattering of currants or other dried fruit
100g of icing sugar
12 glace cherries

Whisk together the milk and the egg and put into the bread machine pan. Put the flour on top to form a complete layer. Put the salt, sugar and butter into separate corners of the pan and the yeast in the centre. Set the machine for dough. Once the machine has finished, remove the dough from the pan and place on a floured surface. Knock back then roll out until about 1 cm thick. Smear the marmalade over the dough then scattered over the currants, leaving about 1cm around the edges. Start at one edge and roll up completely. Cut the roll into 12 equal slices and place each slice onto a well greased large baking sheet so that the swirl is horizontal. Cover and leave to double in size. Bake in a pre-heated over at 190°C, gas mark 5 for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden. Remove from the tin onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely. In the meantime, mix the icing sugar with a small amount of water to make a sloppy icing. Spoon icing onto the top of each bun and finish with a glace cherry in the centre. Leave in the air until the icing has crusted over.