A jelly that's different every single year.
This one doesn't start with a recipe. It starts with a walk along our boundaries each autumn to see what the hedgerow has actually produced that year, crab apples, sloes, rosehips, blackberries, whatever's ripened and however much of it there is. It's a tradition older than any written recipe: cooks have always made a version of this jelly, because it was simply the practical way to use up whatever the hedge gave, before anything went to waste.
Which means no two years are quite the same. Some years lean sharper, with more sloe and crab apple; others turn out sweeter and deeper, when the blackberries have done well. Slow-cooked and strained until it runs deep and jewel-clear, it carries a complexity that only comes from fruit nobody planted in a row.
Very good on toast. Better with a strong cheese. Quietly exceptional with cold meats and worth remembering that the jar you're opening this year won't taste exactly like the one you had last year, or the one you'll get next.
Ingredients: Crab apple. Sugar. Rosehips. Sloe berries. Blackberries.
Gathered from our own hedgerows at Cross Bank Farm.
A jelly that's different every single year.
This one doesn't start with a recipe. It starts with a walk along our boundaries each autumn to see what the hedgerow has actually produced that year, crab apples, sloes, rosehips, blackberries, whatever's ripened and however much of it there is. It's a tradition older than any written recipe: cooks have always made a version of this jelly, because it was simply the practical way to use up whatever the hedge gave, before anything went to waste.
Which means no two years are quite the same. Some years lean sharper, with more sloe and crab apple; others turn out sweeter and deeper, when the blackberries have done well. Slow-cooked and strained until it runs deep and jewel-clear, it carries a complexity that only comes from fruit nobody planted in a row.
Very good on toast. Better with a strong cheese. Quietly exceptional with cold meats and worth remembering that the jar you're opening this year won't taste exactly like the one you had last year, or the one you'll get next.
Ingredients: Crab apple. Sugar. Rosehips. Sloe berries. Blackberries.
Gathered from our own hedgerows at Cross Bank Farm.