© Nicholas and Sherry Lu Aldridge/FLPA
© Bob Gibbons/FLPA
© A.N.T. Photo Library
Widespread and frequent in hedgerows and woods, especially beech. A lofty tree, up to 30 m (100 ft) high, with shining, reddish-brown bark and an abundance of five-petalled white flowers in the spring. Leaves are alter-nate, oval, sharply toothed. The fruit is like a small, dark or light red, cultivated cherry.
The wild cherry is a beautiful tree in the springtime, and again in autumn when the leaves turn red. The fruit can be either sweet or bitter. It used to be sold occasionally in London on the branch. These are the best fruits to use for cherry brandy. Put as many as you can find in a bottle with a couple of teaspoons of sugar, and top up with brandy. It will be ready after three or four months. Another wild cherry product is the sticky resin that exudes from the trunks, especially if they’re damaged in some way. This has been used by children and forestry workers as a kind of chewing gum. It has, like most gums, more texture than taste.
© John Eveson/FLPA
Bullace, Damsons and Wild Plums Prunus species
The true bullace, Prunus domestica ssp. insititia, may be a scarce native of old hedgerows, but the majority of wild plums found in the countryside are either seeded from garden trees or are reverted orchard specimens. Fruit blue-black, brownish, or green-yellow, and usually midway in size between a sloe and a cultivated damson.
Wild plums are ripe from early October, and, unlike sloes, are usually just about sweet enough to eat raw. Otherwise they can be used like sloes, in jellies, gin, and autumn puddings. Wild plums make excellent dark jams, and the French jam specialist Gisèle Tronche has pointed out how the addition of a little ground cumin seed and aniseed can improve conventional recipes. Alternatively try her late autumn, wild fruit humeur noir, which she describes as having ‘the colour of a good, healthy, black-tempered funk’.
Wild fruit jam
Crush together 800 g (2 lb) of stoned dark damsons and 200 g (8 oz) sugar, and leave overnight. Boil together 200 g (8 oz) of elderberries and 600 g (1½ lb) of blackberries for ten minutes. Add the damsons, another 600 g (1½ lb) of sugar, a tablespoon of cider vinegar and the juice of one lemon, and bring to the boil again. Cook for about an hour, until the desired consistency is reached. Pour into jars, leave to cool, and then seal.
Lamb and plum tagine
2 medium onions
50 g (2 oz) butter
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tbsp finely chopped root ginger
a few threads of saffron
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp cinnamon
1 kg (2 lbs) organic lamb, shanks or small leg
500 g (1 lb) wild cherry plums, or damsons
water, stock or white wine
sloe or damson gin (optional)
In a casserole or thick saucepan, sauté the onions in the butter with the cumin seed, for about 10 minutes, until the seeds have burst and the onions are golden. Add the ginger, saffron, crushed garlic and cinnamon. Cook together for a couple of minutes. Fry the lamb in the mixture quickly, turning it so that all sides are slightly browned and well coated with the spices. Add half the damsons, and about a cupful of water, stock or white wine. Cook gently in an oven at 150°C/gas 2, for 2 hours, checking the level of the liquid once or twice. Fifteen minutes before the end, add the remainder of the damsons and a small glass of sloe or damson gin – if you enjoy the almond taste given by plum-family stones. The liquid should be appreciably thicker at the end (give it a sharp boil for 5 minutes on top of the stove if not), and the lamb coming free of the bone.
A small deciduous tree, frequent in woods, heath and hedges. Leaves are oval and often downy. White or pink blossom appears April – May, and a yellowish-green fruit from July.
Most of the apples growing wild in the countryside are not true crab apples, but what are known as ‘wildings’ – that is, apples that have sprung naturally from the discarded cores of cultivated varieties. Apple varieties and species cross-fertilise very readily: this is why apple trees must be propagated by grafting if they are to stay true, and why it has been possible, over the last few centuries, for breeders to raise more than 6,000 named varieties. So don’t despise wilding apples. They are often sweet enough to eat raw, and here and there, for instance, in a hedge by an old orchard, you may find a descendant of an obsolete variety such as Margil, which still has some of its parents’ characteristics. True crab apples, which tend to be confined to old hedges and open woods, are best used for tart jellies and for pickling. They can be identified by their spiny branches, and by the smaller, harder and greener fruit. Use them not only by themselves, but mixed with other wild fruits for jellies or ‘hedgerow jam’; blackberry, elderberry, wild plums and hazelnuts are good companions. Alternatively, pickle the apples, unpeeled, in spiced vinegar as an accompaniment to roast pork. Thrown in the pan with the meat, they will burst and baste it with their juices.
Uncooked apple and pear chutney
This is a recipe developed by my brother David from an Australian version, which in turn seems to have originated in the East End of London, to judge from its rhyming-slang nickname ‘Stairs Pickle’. It’s unusual in being uncooked.
450 g (1 lb) sharp apples
450 g (1 lb) firm pears
25 g (1 oz) root ginger
2 cloves of garlic
450 g (1 lb) raisins
450 g (1 lb) white sugar
600 ml (1 pint) cider vinegar
2 tsp of salt
1 tsp chilli powder
Peel and core the apples and pears, and finely chop the root ginger and garlic. Mix them thoroughly with all the other ingredients, cover and leave in a cool, dark place for 3 days. Bottle the chutney in sterilised jars. It will be ready to use in about a month.
© David Hosking/FLPA