The American Who Challenged the Hornet’s Nest

In Segur le Chateau we like to eat local where possible and grow our own food. As well as foraging in the woods, many of Segur’s residents keep immaculate gardens and vegetable patches. One of those gardens is kept by a good friend of mine, an American national, the Comtesse de la TOUR. 

Occupying a gorgeous medieval tower, which was formerly (555 years ago) the appellate court of the region, the Comtesse keeps a serious raspberry patch. However, our usual casual grazing of her raspberry patch has been interrupted this year. There is an invader in Segur. The frelon Asiatic (Asian hornet) has arrived.

These nasty creatures entered France as stowaways in a boat load of pottery that came from China in 2004. After entering France through the Port of Bordeaux, the frelon have been migrating east to neighbouring regions, following rivers and watercourses. This summer, the frelon landed in Segur le Chateau.  

As it happens, the frelon have good taste in food. Like us, they love raspberries. They spend their days hovering around the bushes and frightening people. Our local tree surgeon was bitten by one and described the experience as similar to being shot with a nail gun. Ouch!

Keen to avoid such experiences, the Comtesse has derived a cunning system to “catch, kill, boil and dispose” of these bio-pests. Gone are the summer dresses and flip flops, now the Comtesse wears a makeshift bee keeper’s outfit, kept secure with clothing pegs to visit her raspberries.      

I visited her recently, to document the measures the Comtesse takes to control the frelon. 

The Comtesse sets the wasp traps among the raspberry bushes. During the heat of the day, the frelon fly around them, and eventually in through an opening in the bottom. They can't fly downward, so they cannot leave the trap. 

The Comtesse visits the raspberries in the early hours of the morning, before the frelon are active, to empty the traps. The frelon don't die in the traps, so the Comtesse drops the entire trap in a bucket of boiling water to ensure they are dead. Only once the frelon are dead, can the trap be safely opened (as above). 

The frelon are then disposed of into the stormwater drain. 

The frelon are the large hornets with the yellow stripes and yellow feet. 

Et voila! Perfect, sweet, raspberries. The reward after the long process of disturbing the hornets nest!

Super simple blackberry and goats cheese salad

We’ve still got loads of blackberries ripe and ready for picking in our area, and also plenty of berries yet to ripen. Over the last few weeks I’ve been picking, cooking, serving blackberries in drinks and desserts.

For last night’s dinner party, I decided to promote the blackberries from to dessert to part of the main course. This was also driven in part, by the fact we’ve got a huge bowl of Bramley apples to use up, so a French apple pie was the preferred dessert option. 

I experimented with a blackberry and goats cheese salad, dressed with a pomegranate molasses, olive oil and black pepper. The salad was super quick, taking less than five minutes to put together. It was very well received by our guests, who expressed initial surprise at blackberries in the salad, but concluded that soft goats cheese and blackberries actually form a very good partnership.  Here’s the recipe.

Recipe

Four cups mixed baby salad leaves

Half a cup blackberries

50grams soft goats cheese

Slug of pomegranate molasses

Two slugs of olive oil

Ground black pepper

Mix together in a salad bowl the salad leaves and blackberries. Crumble the soft goats cheese over the top. For the dressing, mix the olive oil, pomegranate molasses and ground black pepper in a small jar. Shake it up, taste, and when you’re happy with the sweet, rich, peppery flavour, pour it over the salad to serve. Et voila! 

A Sunday forage and competitive bake off

Chris (my husband) and I spent the weekend with friends, and their four kids, at their place in the country. It was a perfect weekend, collecting fallen fruits from the damson, Victoria plum, and apple trees in the backyard.


We then headed out on country amble and an afternoon forage. We collected blackberries, sloes, elderberries and hawthorn berries from the hedgerows. Being before the first frost, it’s strictly a little early to pick sloes. However given my enthusiasm for making sloe gin, and the potential to use a freezer to act as the all important frost, we picked them anyway.

 
Dragging our haul of foraged goods back to Randolph and Lalu’s house, we quickly agreed to a “crumble off,” with Randolph and I as the two competitors and everyone else as judges. Randolph pleased the crowds with his mother’s crumble recipe, complete with rich and buttery crumble, and blackberries and apples infused with cinnamon. I managed to surprise the judges with my flippant inclusion of elderberries, together with the blackberries, apples, and plums.

The judges awarded first prize to Randolph, which was fair, because the crumble was superior, but sad for me, as it was my first experience of competitive baking!  

Apple and Ginger Chutney

Home grown seems to be catching on in our neighbourhood, with our household fast becoming the place to deliver any overflow. A couple of days ago my friend Jen brought over a bag of cooking apples. They weren’t from her tree, she’s got pears, but from a photographer named John, whom Jen was working with on a shoot.

I gratefully accepted the fruit and got to thinking about making a robust and tangy apple chutney. In our house, on nights we don’t cook, or eat out, we often enjoy a Ploughman’s. Our version includes a chunk of mature cheddar, some home grown lettuce, tomatoes and beetroot, and perhaps some hummus and whole wheat pitta bread. If we have any in the house, we’ll add chutney. We serve it on one big board, as opposed to individual plates, and dive in.

For an extra kick, I infused the apples and onions with freshly grated ginger. The spicy, peppery, slightly sweet, but pungent taste plays well against the apples. Instead of using sugar, as called for in most chutney recipes, I sweetened this one with a local apple juice.

Recipe
5 cooking apples (preferably from a friend, or a friend of a friend), peeled and chopped into small cubes
2 brown onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 table spoons fresh chopped ginger
1 lemon
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup apple juice
4 cloves
2 sterilized jars

Sautee the onions and ginger for a few minutes. In a bowl, squeeze the lemon over the apple cubes. Then add the apple to the onions and ginger. Stir occasionally on a medium heat, until the apples soften. Then add the apple cider vinegar and the apple juice. Drop in the cloves.

Simmer until the liquid has significantly reduced. This will likely take around 25mins. Check the chutney is at the correct consistency by dragging a wooden spoon through the mixture. If it runs back together, the chutney requires more reduction, if not, it’s done.

Remove from heat and cool. Once cooled, remove the cloves, and place the mixture in the jars and seal.

Try and leave for two weeks before consuming. And remember, chutney's and preserves make excellent homemade gifts. Given this recipe makes two jars - go on, share the love!

I’m always on the lookout for new ideas and recipes. Do you have a favourite chutney recipe? If so, I’d love to read it.

Brilliant blackberry and chilli syrup

It’s hard to walk past a hedgerow at this time of year without noticing leaves tinged with jewel-hued spheres of green, red and purple. Its blackberry season! Readily available in fruit stores and supermarkets everywhere, it can be much more satisfying, and if you take some enthusiastic friends, a whole lot more fun, to collect your own

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A versatile fruit, excellent eaten raw with pancakes, or in a crumble like we also enjoyed (below), there are no shortage of options.

As well as the crumble, which was devoured by myself and a bunch of friends, I wanted to experiment with a slightly longer-lasting blackberry recipe. After an online read around, I decided to experiment with a blackberry and chilli syrup, like the one made by Heidi Swan.

This simple and quick syrup, is rich in flavour, with a slow and firey burn that creeps in at the end of each mouthful.  Heidi suggests swirling into yogurt, oatmeal, and crème fraîche, or on toast, over goats cheese, or pancakes. All delicious options!

At our place it’s been eaten as a late night snack on crackers, added to champagne for a brilliantly sparkly aperitif, and spread on toast topped with blue cheese. The omnivore in our family has also suggested the syrup would be excellent with game – he’s mentioned venison and pheasant. 

Here’s the recipe, slightly adapted from Heidi’s version:

Recipe
(Makes around 500mL)
    3 tea spoons dried crushed chillies
    1 cup dark Muscovado sugar
    1 cup organic brown sugar
    1 1/2 cups water
    Juice of one large lemon
    1 cup blackberries

 Add the dried chillies, sugars, water, and lemon juice to a medium saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Boil, stirring regularly, until the mixture has reduced to 2 cups. This should take around 25 minutes. 

While that’s boiling, puree the blackberries with a hand blender. Strain the berries through a fine-mesh strainer, and set puree aside.

Head back to the stovetop, once the chilli mixture has reduced, remove from heat. Add to the berry mixture and blend until smooth. Strain through a sieve into a heat-proof bowl.

Pour into a bottle and refrigerate. Enjoy!!

Hawthorn berry syrup

It’s the time of year when Hawthorn trees are laden with bright red berries. It’s only autumn but the bright red berries against the backdrop of brilliant green, remind one of Christmas!

The berries of the Hawthorn tree have been used for thousands of years in the Greek culture to treat a variety of health issues.  In China, the berries are made into a tea, which is drunk to promote the health of the circulatory system, treat angina, high blood pressure, as well as stomach problems.

I used the hawthorn berries we collected in Devon over the weekend, to make a honey infused syrup. We served it today on pancakes with mixed autumn berries. Here’s the recipe.

Recipe

Two cups hawthorn berries

One jar of honey (200mL)

Muslin cloth (to strain berries)

Bring two cups of hawthorn berries to the boil in two cups of water. Once boiling simmer the berries for 20 minutes. The water will reduce the liquid should become a brownish/red colour as the juice leaches from the berries.

Strain the berries, retaining the water. Once the berries have cooled slightly, strain through a muslin bag, squeezing out the remaining liquid into the berry stained water.

Return the liquid to the stove top. On a low heat, simmer the hawthorn berry juice together with the honey. Stir slowly until the honey has melted fully into the berry juice. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Once cooled, pour into a glass jar, or bottle and leave to set overnight in the fridge.

Serve the hawthorn berry syrup with pancakes, or use as a sweetener for tea. It tastes delicious, is very healthy, and should keep for 3-4 months in the fridge. Enjoy!!

A day's foraging

Jen, Chris and I just returned from a day's foraging in the woods. Below is a pick of the woodland goods we brought home: acorns; rose hips; rowan berries; and crab apples. Currently we are working on removing the tannins from the acorns, not a quick task! More on what we do with these goodies over the coming days.

Spare pears

A friend of mine mentioned recently she had loads of pears rotting her garden, as they dropped from the tree. Super keen foragers, Chris and I, traipsed up to Jen’s with our big African basket. We arrived to find it wasn’t actually Jen’s tree, but a neighbours.

After collecting all the dropped pears with cooking potential, we picked a few more from the reachable braches and headed home with our loot. We’ve enjoyed sliced pear and cheese, and pear and blue cheese salad over the last few days. The Italian proverb “al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il formaggio con le pere” (don't let the peasant know how good cheese is with pears) springs to mind.

Lastly, we also enjoyed pear and almond crumble (pictured below). Here’s the recipe:

Recipe

5 large pears, peeled and sliced

A handful of ground almond

A handful of sliced almonds

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup plain flour

50 grams butter

Mascarpone and honey (to serve)

Simmer the sliced pears for 5 minutes. In the meantime, mix the flour, ground almond, sugar and butter together. Use your finger tips to work the mixture until you get the consistency of bread crumbs. Once you’ve achieved this drop in the sliced almonds. Once the pears are cooked, drain and arrange in a baking dish. Place the crumble mixture over the top, spreading evenly and covering completely. Cook at 180 degrees for around 20mins, or until the crumble is browned.

Serve hot, with mascarpone mixed with honey.       

Thanks to Asheline Appleton for the excellent photo, berries and dinner!

Making celery salt

Yesterday my friend Jen gave me a huge head of celery that she'd grown. I got it home to realise there were many more celery leaves, than stalks. It seemed like an opportune time to make my first flavoured salt - celery salt. A punchy seasoning salt and important addition to bloody marys, it's very easy to make.

Here’s the recipe

(Ingredients: Maldon sea salt and celery leaves) 

Remove the leaves from a bid bunch of celery and wash them in a colander.

Dry the leaves on a tea towel.

When completely try, pop the leaves on a baking tray and roast in the over for a few minutes (180C). The aim is to dry the leaves, not burn them, so keep a close eye on the oven.

Let the leaves cool. When completely cool crumble the leaves and mix them with an equal measure of flaky sea salt (I used Maldon sea salt). Store in a jar and voila!