As Strong As Soup

This is another quick autumnal idea. I've wittered on about flavoured and fruit vinegars before but they’re such useful things to have around, especially in the dark, dull days of winter, that I wanted to mention this particularly pleasing one made with damsons and sloes. The method is much the same as for any fruit vinegar and can be scaled up or down for the amount of fruit you happen to have. This vinegar can be made with all damsons but the sloes add an extra sharpness that works very well. I reckon that two-thirds damsons to one-third sloes is ideal. This is a traditional British style of sweetened fruit vinegar and it's probably better to treat it like a flavouring syrup rather than a conventional vinegar. It can be used in dressings, is particularly good in marinades and is excellent when added to slow cooked dishes such as braised red cabbage and winter casseroles, especially those made with game. I tend to make fruit vinegars in small batches and use them up ...

Since it's gooseberry picking time, I felt a Gooseberry and Sloe Gin jam was in order. It would probably be more accurate to call this Gooseberry Jam with Sloe Gin but that would remove the huge delight that I get from saying the phrase “Sloe Gin Jam”. It’s astonishing how long little things like that will keep me amused. This is a pretty conventional jam that seems to work best with barely ripe gooseberries. The less ripe gooseberries give the right degree of sharpness and seem to set better. There’s also something very English about this jam; perhaps best enjoyed in an English country garden while reading an Agatha Christie as the distant sound of willow on leather mingles with the music of Elgar drifting from an open window and Blenkinsop, the old family retainer, stumbles drunkenly across the lawn and falls into the ha-ha. (Sorry about that outburst of Old Englishness – I’ve applied a cold flannel to my forehead and I’ll be alright again in...

In my post last year about sloe gin I admitted that after I strain and bottle the gin, I then throw away the sloes. Until now  the recipes that I've come across for recycling sloes haven’t really worked for me. But shortly after writing that post, as I roved out on a fine autumn morning to view the fields and take the air, I met a lady gathering rose hips (sorry, for some reason this posting is turning into a traditional English folk song) . We got talking about sloe gin and she told me off (this happens quite a lot).  She told me that I shouldn't waste gin-soaked sloes and that I should try eating them with chocolate. Well, I've been thinking about that for a while and eventually I tried making these truffles. It turns out that she was right to tell me off, of course. To keep truffles smoother and lighter, I've tended to think that you have to make some kind of custard. I was in a bit of a hurry this time and so I used a decent shop-bought custard instead. The...

There seemed to be a lot of sloes left in the hedgerows this year and since I just couldn't drink any more sloe gin without becoming a nuisance I thought I'd take the opportunity to make a chutney. Sloes add a rich colour and a very sharp fruitiness to chutneys. Since quinces are also in season it seemed a good idea to combine the two things especially since I'd just got hold of some Berzycki quinces. (I had some spare quince which I added to pork braised in perry and that was rather tasty too). I used 300 g of sloe pulp in this chutney but you need at least twice the weight of sloes to produce that amount of pulp – in fact I picked about 640 g of sloes. All you do is wash the sloes, put them in a pan and heat them very gently until they break down. If you do this gently enough, you shouldn't need to add any water, although a little will do no harm. You will need to stir frequently, though. Strain the sloes through a fine sieve and you will have a brightly-coloured,...

Sloe gin is a peculiarly British drink. The French normally gather anything suitable for human consumption from the wild but when I was in the Mayenne earlier this year and suggested that sloes were worth picking I got some very strange looks. So I suppose I’m peculiarly British since I've been making it for quite a few years now. Here's what I do. First collect your sloes. You want the sloes to be ripe – a nice deep colour with a distinctive bloom on them. You don't have to wait until the first frost, as some people say. (Some years the sloes don't seem to ripen well at all if the summer's not good. You can still make sloe gin with a decent taste in those years, but the colour will be less appealing). Once you've gathered a goodly number of sloes, take them home and wash them. Drain them thoroughly, pick them over and throw away any that look nasty in the cold light of the kitchen. Get a large, clean jar with a lid that will seal tightly – I use large French...