Summer in a bottle

Some people say that the British summer starts when the elder blossoms and ends when its berries ripen.  Umm....not 2012!  Summer quite clearly isn't here but as we walked the lanes last weekend the almost citrus aroma of elderflower floated downwind to greet us.

My great grandmother used to make elderflower champagne that my great uncle Arthur would take to his shed.  My grandmother says that five minutes after arriving at my great grandmothers my grandfather would say "better pop up the shed and check that old Arthurs alright".  He would return, half cut, not long after.  Uncle Arthurs shed sat about 150 metres beyond the cottage in a place known locally as 'on top of Trostrey'.  The shed housed a couple of tatty armchairs, a table, Uncle Arthurs bike and an assortment of jam jars that the elderflower cordial was sipped  from.  The only time they drank from proper glasses was when the vicar popped by!

I remember the cottage as my great aunt lived there after my great grandparents died.  It was a fantastic place to play as a child....the hiding places were endless.  My brother and our cousins would argue over who got to put the chickens away.  The chosen one would get £1 in return.  There was a fallen oak tree half way up the drive providing hours of fun.  It was an aeroplane, a boat, a bus, a spaceship and if you crawled beneath it became a secret cave or dungeon.  Even though Uncle Arthur had been dead for many years, his bike remained in the shed.  I clearly remember a pair of birds nesting under the saddle every year.

Anyway, back to the elderflower.  My great grandmother would make cordial too and this is what I did with my bountiful harvest.  In the supermarket elderflower cordial is marketed as a luxury.  They sell it only in fancy shaped glass bottles and charge ridiculous amounts of money for it.  I have just made three bottles and it cost me next to nothing.

The flowers taste best when they are picked on a dry, hot day and the cream coloured heads are far tastier than the white ones.  There wasn't going to be a dry, hot day so I had to settle for a damp, cool day and hope for the best.  I dissolved some caster sugar in boiling water and added the elderflower, sliced oranges and lemons and a sprinkling of citric acid.  Citric acid doesn't make any difference to the taste but enhances shelf life and stops it going cloudy.  I left the heady scented infusion for 24 hours before straining it through muslin (eating some slices of orange) and pouring into sterilised bottles.

Diluted with sparkling water and served with a sprig of mint over ice is perfect for a summers day.  With no sign of summer and friends over on the weekend I am thinking that the elderflower cordial might make a tasty gin mixer!

In our house, one project normally leads to another.....meet Curly.

He is a he because Carys says so and he came home with the freshly picked elderflower.  We don't know a great deal about caterpillars other than he can eat 6 leaves in about 12 hours, he will hopefully change to a pupa from which a butterfly or moth should emerge.....may be we'll come back to Curly at a later date!