Foragers' Diary - Part Five

This is my first summer living in Suffolk and I haven’t yet worked out where the best fruit for foraging is to be found.  Blackberries for instance are quite plentiful everywhere but the size and quality of the berries is very variable.  Some are big and compact, others seem to have no real shape and are impossible to pick, others again are small and mean looking. I put this down to local factors like soil type, or how much sunshine the plants receive, but then I read a very informative piece in the Guardian this week explaining that what we know as the Blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) is actually made up of no fewer than 350 ‘microspecies’ in the UK alone, and perhaps as many as 2,000 world-wide.

Apparently blackberries are apomictic, meaning they reproduce by cloning instead of good old sexual reproduction employed by most flowering plants.  Anyone who has ever tried to uproot a bramble bush from the garden will know that those long, lateral branches it throws out take root whenever they touch the ground.  In this way, over time the plant actually produces genetically identical copies of itself, hence the ‘normal’ hybridization doesn’t occur and each plant becomes its own microspecies.  So when you find a good site the best thing is to keep it in mind for future reference.  So far I have a found an ‘adequate’ supply, and for obvious reasons I won’t say exactly where, though I am still on the lookout for somewhere better..

Anyway, in about half an hour of picking yesterday, before the combined attacks of thorns, nettles and a rather determined wasp persuaded me to call it a day, I collected 2 lbs of delicious fruit.  That was enough to put me into preserving mode and so out came the preserving pan, the muslin cloth and the other paraphernalia of jam making.

When it comes to blackberries I prefer a clear, strained jelly to a traditional jam made with the whole fruit.  This is because the thousands of little pips in blackberries get in between my teeth and annoy me.  Bramble jelly is easy to make and the sweet, unctuous taste seems far too good for it ever be a free food.

Start by washing and picking over the fruit, discarding any stalks, hitchhikers etc.  Put the fruit in a large pan, I use a specialist preserving pan.  For 2lbs of fruit I added about 1 pint of water and the juice of one lemon, the pips fell in too but that is ok. They add more pectin which helps the jelly to set, and they get filtered out later along with the blackberries.

Simmer for about an hour then pass the whole concoction through a muslin cloth or jelly bag if you have one.

Squeeze the cloth carefully to get all of the delicious juice out.  You can discard the strained fruit.

Stir in 1 pound of sugar for each pint of liquid you have, in this case it was one of each, and simmer again in a clean pan until the liquid becomes thick and sticky.  Turn a desert spoon through the liquid until it coats the back of the spoon.

Alternatively put a drop on a clean saucer and watch how it starts to set.   How runny you make the jelly depends largely on taste, but don’t over cook it or you’ll get a black sticky mess.  Make sure your jars are sterile.   When you’re ready carefully pour the jelly into the prepared jars and seal them as soon as the jelly is cool enough and stops steaming.

That’s it!  You have now captured some late summer sunshine to be brought out throughout the winter months whenever you need a luxurious treat!