Sometimes I get quite homesick for London: the crowds, the culture, the buzz, the overwhelming diversity of amazing stuff to eat. But a trip to the Dorset or Hampshire countryside, just minutes from home, always puts me right. This time, it was our favourite corner of the New Forest, Linford Bottom.
The kids think the name is quite hilarious of course, but they also love it because it’s an amazing place to play. A squiggly, shallow stream runs through gentle verdant banks; because of the way the stream bends and turns it’s possible to find a secluded little spot even when the crowds descend in the heat of summer. It’s perfect for picnics, admiring the cattle and ponies that lollop around grazing, and taking a little dip when it’s hot. And picking blackberries.
We spent a good couple of hours picking blackberries last weekend, risking the prickles and thorns to collect a whopping big container-full. These purply-black gems have been grown and enjoyed around the world for tens of thousands of years, not only as a food but for their supposed medicinal qualities. At one point they were thought to protect against spells and curses if picked during certain phases of the moon. Children with hernias were known to pass through bramble arches to cure them, and boils were supposed to mend after a sufferer crawled through them. (Obviously, as gardenguides.com points out, it’s more likely the thorns simply lanced the boils. Aargh.)
They are chock full of goodness (antioxidants including Vitamin C) as well as deliciousness. According to Eat With The Seasons website, blackberries were believed to be such a nutritious powerhouse that during World War 1, children in England were given time off school to collect them for juice, which was sent to soldiers to help keep them healthy.
As there’s one in our party who doesn’t favour cooked fruit per se we opted to make jam when got home, which we ate with freshly baked rye bread. We also used some in a batch of gorgeous coconut slice. The jam is incredibly simple - no pectin or faffing about with thermometers - just remember to wash the fruit carefully if you have picked it yourself. Watch out for lurking creepy crawlies.
The vote in our party was for seedless jam, so we strained it all through a fine sieve. The result was a lovely thick and smooth jam but we did lose a lot of blackberry in the process, yielding 1 1/4 jars worth of jam from 500g of fruit. Don’t bother straining if you don’t mind the seeds, or simply strain the seeds from half of the jam, returning the strained stuff to the non-strained stuff, so that the result is not quite so teeth-pickingly seedy.
Blackberry Jam
- equal weights of blackberries (washed and carefully picked over) and caster sugar
- a piece of lemon rind plus a generous squeeze of lemon juice, to taste
Place a saucer in the freezer an hour or so in advance of cooking the jam.
Place the fruit, sugar and lemon rind in a heavy-based pan and gently bring to the boil, skimming off any scum. Gently boil for a few minutes and then remove from the heat and gently mash with a potato masher. Return to the heat, add lemon juice to taste, and cook for a further 10 minutes or so.
To see if the jam is ready, place a fingernail-size amount on your frozen saucer and pop it back into the freezer for a couple of minutes. If the jam wrinkles up in a semi-firm kind of way when you push it with your finger, it’s ready. If not, cook for a little longer but check for doneness every minute or so as you don’t want to over-cook it.
If you prefer your jam without seeds, firmly push it through a fine sieve with the back of a wooden spoon to get as much juice from around the seeds as you can. Pour the hot jam into hot sterilised jars if you have made more than you can use in a week or so, and cover immediately with sterilised lids.
Coconut slice is a bit of a classic in Australia and the smell of it baking is one of my earliest childhood food memories. It consists of a dense cakey layer at the bottom, followed by a generous layer of jam (usually raspberry) followed by an intensely coconutty topping. This is the recipe I used and it worked really well. However, if you give it a go, I’d use a little more jam than suggested and keep a close eye on it during the final stages of cooking - the coconut layer should be squidgy not crisp and shouldn’t really go brown like mine did. I didn’t actually get any complaints, though.
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