Edible wild fruit

One of the pleasures of country walks is picking and eating the wild fruit from woods and hedgerows.

The search starts towards the end of June for bilberries and wild raspberries. The blue berries of the bilberry are quite familiar and can be found mainly in fir or oak woods. They can be eaten straight from the bush or collected to make delicious jam or pie fillings.

Wild raspberries are harder to come by. Their fragrance is so delicious that it is a pity to make jam from them; they are best eaten with a little sugar and cream. Equally delicious are the small wild strawberries, again with a far superior flavor to the cultivated varieties.

A common fruit with many uses is the elderberry; the clumps of small berries are used to make elderberry wine, or jam. An unusual recipe uses not the berries but the clumps of flat white flowers; dipped in batter and deep fried they are served hot with icing or caster sugar.

The end of the summer brings blackberry time. Abundant and easy to spot this is everybody's fruit. Pick them only when they are large and juicy and have turned black or they will be sour. Very good on their own with sugar and cream, they also make wonderful jam and jelly, and good pie fillings on their own or with the traditional accompaniment of apple. Stewed and mixed with double cream they turn into blackberry fool; freeze the fool in your refrigerator and you have ice cream. Or for a lighter pudding makes blackberry water ice, for which we give you the recipe below. Blackberries have the advantage of freezing well, so you can store them for several months in the freezer

Sloes, rather like very small wild damsons, make the most delicious of liqueurs, sloe gin. We give you the recipe for this below. Rosehips from the wild rose bushes in the hedgerows can be made into rosehip syrup, a soothing drink for young babies. Then there is the harvest of the nuts in autumn. Beech and hazel nuts are found plentifully in the woods; roast them in the oven or eat them as they are. Only sweet chestnuts are edible but the horse chestnuts provide the well-known glossy conkers which children love to collect and play with.

Sloe gin
To make sloe gin, half fill an empty gin bottle with the sloes — each one must be pricked all over to make sure that the juice flows out when you add the gin. Fill the rest of the bottle with small lump sugar — the ordinary lumps will be hard to push through the mouth of the bottle, doubling your work, and if you use granulated sugar you will use more than with lumps and the sloe gin will be too sweet. Add two or three almonds and a small handful of raisins for extra flavor and then fill the bottle with as much gin as it will take. Put the stopper on the bottle, or a cork, making sure it is a tight fit or the alcohol will evaporate. Shake the bottle well every day and keep it for at least six months. If you want a stronger drink, omit the sugar, fill the whole bottle with the pricked sloes and top up with gin — but in this case keep your sloe gin for at least a year.

Blackberry water ice
This is lighter than ice cream and it is deliriously fresh tasting. Make syrup by boiling together 10 tablespoons of water with 120g (about 4oz) of sugar for about 5 minutes. Leave to cool. Wash and sieve 450g (lib) of berries, add them to the cooled syrup, and freeze in the freezing compartment of your refrigerator, covered with foil.

Blackberry jelly
Stir the blackberries gently until they are quite soft (it should not be necessary to add water, but if they are not exuding a lot of juice adds two or three tablespoons of water.) Put them through a sieve so that you get the pulp but not the pips. For each pint of pulp add a pound of sugar and boil until the mixture jells. Pot at once.