Autumnal treats to enjoy all year through

By Tom Gillespie

THIS is the time of the year to pick sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn bush, a task similar to picking blackberries, and equally as torturous as you try to avoid the sharp thorns.

Since my youth I have made sloe wine but in more enlightened years sloe gin was much more palatable.

Blackthorn can be found all along the byroads around Castlebar and down country lanes outside the town.

The first time I attempted sloe wine proved disastrous as I was told to bury the bottles for a few months to allow them mature. The burying part was easy. Locating the buried treasure was another thing altogether, as I neglected to mark the locations where the bottles were planted.

Those that I did find came a cropper as my spade smashed into the bottles, allowing the ruby liquid to seep into the ground.

Picking sloes is hard work. About 45 minutes of picking will get you about four pounds of sloes - enough for a gallon of wine.

Pick the sloes from the south facing bushes, and use a plastic bucket tied around your neck so you have both hands free. Try not to get too many leaves in with the berries because they are fiddly to remove afterwards.

If you are tempted to taste a sloe, go ahead, but I guarantee you won’t do it again. It will completely dry out your mouth.

Wash the sloes and the old recipes suggest each individual sloe should be pricked with a thorn from the bush on which it was grown. The reason for the pricking is to release the inner ruby juice from the berry. This, however, is hard and time-consuming work.

My alternative is to freeze the sloes and by doing so you can make the sloe gin at any time of the year. Once thawed the berries go into mush.

Place the sloes in a one-gallon demijohn and four ounces of sugar for each imperial pint of sloes.

The jar is then filled with gin - it can be a cheap brand as the sloes will enhance it - sealed, turned several times to mix, and stored in a cool, dark place. It is turned every day for the first two weeks, then each week, until at least three months have passed.

Okay, you won’t achieve this but don’t worry as long as you give it a good shaking now and again, the result will still be the same.

The gin will now have a deep ruby red colour. The liqueur is syphoned off through a muslin cloth to eliminate any sediment and bottled. The remaining sloe mush I usually discard but it could be made in to jam or chutney.

A deceased fisherman friend substituted poteen for the gin and it proved a magnificent liqueur. But when mixing the initial ingredients he added a few drops of almond essence which could also be added to the gin mixture, or a few cloves and a small stick of cinnamon.

For the last few years I have grown tomatoes and there is usually a glut of them left over at this time of year which we make into chutney, which I consider the best ever tomato chutney.

ingredients:

2 kg of fresh ripe tomatoes, cut in half

1 red pepper, halved

4 to 5 ripe red chillies, halved and de-seeded

4 to 5 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 onion, peeled and quartered

A few fresh herbs - rosemary, thyme, oregano, etcetera

Olive oil

159g sultanas

Approx. 250g Cox, Braebum or good eating apple, peeled and chopped

Approx. 500ml cider vinegar

Approx. 350 brown sugar

Bay leaf

Cinnamon

Lemon juice

Stew the apples in a large pot with the sultanas, sugar and vinegar.

Add a bay leaf and a stick of cinnamon. The key to this fantastic chutney is the way the tomatoes are cooked.

Fresh tomatoes from the glasshouse are roasted in a hot oven for 20 minutes along with the onion, peppers, chillies and garlic and some fresh herbs on the stalks all with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice.

Once roasted, remove the onions, peppers and chillies.

Discard the herbs.

Chop the peppers (skin first), onion and chillies and add to the stewed apples.

Get a pair of scissors and cut up the roasted tomatoes in the same roasting tray.

This is essential as it means you don't lose any of the fantastic juices.

Add this to the same pot.

Simmer gently for another while to let the flavours combine and reduce the liquid down to the right consistency.

This is a rustic chutney and quite chunky. Season and adjust vinegar/sugar as required.

This recipe can also be made with green tomatoes, just omit the red pepper and use green jalapeño peppers instead of red chillies.

The resulting chutney will also be less sweet.

I haven’t picked wild field mushrooms for a few years, not that I haven’t tried, and hopefully this autumn will yield up a bountiful supple.

I have a few favourite locations, which because of intense farming are getting fewer and fewer, where I usually strike gold. Back in the 1960s nearly every country field would be speckled with the white caps.

These wild mushrooms are delicious but one or two feeds are enough.

One delightful thing to do is to made mushroom soup stock, freeze and serve up on Christmas Day, a real autumn treat in the middle of winter.