I knew it was Seville oranges I needed and that January is the time to get them. I was thinking of trying the market but as Tesco had them I caved early and bought 2kg. The recipe uses 1 kg but I thought if I'm going to have all that faff I at least want a good few jars out of it, so made a double batch.
I won't recount the recipe or method precisely as Delia's is far superior to my tale of strife but let me tell you this: to squeeze the contents of 2kg of oranges and put all the 'bits and pips' in a muslin took me well over an hour and I wondered if I might be delirious with the zesty aroma. A bit fiddly does not cover it!
Although Delia said not to worry about some of the pith I fretted and gave each empty husk a little clean up with a teaspoon so I was satisfied they were as clean as could be.

A rather untidy muslin of bits! The juice went straight into a pan with the water. Next the peel needed chopping. You get thin cut or thick cut marmalade but mine I would call mixed cut and frankly it's lucky to all be cut at all because this took FOREVER too. I preferred to cut each half in half, press the which side flat on the board and pull the knife top to bottom in quick succession rather than scrunch up. Yes, I'm slovenly on finesse but that's tough, it will taste the same (even if texture may differ from one mouthful to another).
There was such a mountain of peel that even my large preserving pan was not big enough so I tipped some into a separate pan. I the big one the muslin was dangled in and tied up like a buoy and left to simmer gently for a couple of hours.

A fair amount of evaporation took place which pleasingly meant both pans could be put back into one. The bag of bits was taken out and squeezed. This was the worst part because in the video it looks easy and you scrape the goo off the bag with a spoon but when I did it the goo just went all over my hands and I felt like an idiot!
What remained of the goo went into the pan along with what looks like a monumental amount of sugar. Delia explained that as the sugar preserves it, the very bitter Seville oranges balance it out - of course sweeter oranges would make for a sweet jam instead. I was very cautious about making sure the sugar was all dissolved but well after an hour of checking, stirring and waiting, even my caution was thrown to the wind in favour of cracking on.
A rolling boil (I recounted it incorrectly to C as a roaring boil which does sound equally as dangerous) is reached my cranking it up to full whack and standing back as furiously swelling molten lava threatens to burn your face.
A stir every now and again to avoid burning it on the bottom of the pan. After an alarming 15 minutes the first test took place (not set) and I learned that you must take it off the heat during the test else what you have tested is 3 minutes behind what you have - that's where I've blundered before.
On the second test I was happy with the result, so dissolved a little butter around on the scum which pretty much all disappeared.
I ate most of the test sample before snapping.
The jar preparation took ages too, I wanted to remove old labels before washing and sterilising.

Then finally, finally, I poured it into jars and cleaned up. Start to finish it was 7 hours of my life. So yes, a bit fiddly and long winded but I do have 16 jars of amazing marmalade to eat and give as gifts. My Dad likes marmalade and always used to make me try it on toast , which I loathed but now it's something I love!

This was not cheap to make, in fact it cost a lot even without factoring my labour but I have made something pretty amazing.

If you want to make some for yourself you had better get your skates on and buy those oranges!!! Allow a good amount of time.
Have you made marmalade before or are you tempted to give it a go?

Take care,
Sophie

Making soup is a regular ritual for me. Whenever we have a chicken I ensure that it gets popped in the big pan and boiled up to make stock which is then portioned up and frozen, ready to be used for my next mega batch of soup. It's always preferable to use whatever is in season and needs using up before it spoils.
Over the summer it's usually courgette which needs using up but this year we easily kept pace and didn't have a glut at all that I can remember.
I ditched the pumpkins of yesteryears which are difficult to cut, peel and use all in one go and instead I grew two types of butternut squash and uchiki kuri (red kuri). These are brilliant for using in soup from the day they ripen on the plant all the way through winter as they will happily store for months. The flavour of these squashes is far superior to pumpkin and they are much easier to handle although I would mention that holding the peeled flesh dries out my skin and I look particularly crusty of hand the following day.

• One large or several small chopped onions - sweat in generous blob of butter until soft
• Add a teaspoon each of curry powder and (smoked) paprika , stir and let the aroma develop for a minute or so
• Dice into approx 1cm cubes 3 or 4 small aubergine and about half a small butternut squash and pop these into the pan, stir
• Add in a can of chopped tomatoes and top it up with stock of choice, I use my homemade chicken for extra flavour. Season with salt and pepper, stir, bring to the boil then simmer for around 25 minutes
• Ensure it's all soft, take off the heat and blend when a little cooler. 

The celeriac we grew are very small this year. They are such a slow growing vegetable that if the conditions aren't right, or they have a late start you will never end up with a good crop. The little veg scrub up alright so I teamed them with some ugly parsnips to make a creamy white soup. Again, start with onions. This time add a few cloves of garlic once the onions are soft. Add sliced or cubed veg and top up with stock but if in doubt add too much liquid as the celeriac and parsnip thicken things alarmingly. Blend!
I did want a good broccoli soup recipe and the one I found from a well known chef was essentially just broccoli, stock and a drop of cream which I thought was a woeful effort. I at least added onions but mine was uninspiring.

Take care,
Sophie

It wouldn't be autumn without going blackberry picking - the annual foraging tradition loved by so many. An apple and blackberry crumble is the classic way to use them and I admit to having neglected this some years, more through missing the boat rather than not feeling like it. I come from a dynasty of crumble makers. Us women have produced hundreds of these over the years and yet most have fallen short of their full glory. There's nothing worse than a crumble which disappoints. With my complete lack of instinct when it comes to cooking, baking and anything to do with food assembly, I always rely on a recipe to guide me through choppy waters. I wince when I say that my previous go-to recipe was a 'healthy' option which not only failed in texture and taste but really offered little in the way of healthy benefits either. It was time to try something else. Google offered me a recipe from delicious magazine which looked suitably different and I gave it a try. Actually I'm going to be searching there for lots of recipes in future as they have a lot of mouthwatering dishes over there - plus they are easy to print off.

Is it ok to make it three weeks on the trot? Because that's what your girl did. Did I mention I love desserts? Here's my slightly tweaked recipe from the original:

Ingredients:
Approx 1100g bramley apples
250g or thereabouts carefully rinsed and sorted to ensure no stems, cobwebs or creepy crawlies have joined the party
3 teaspoons of cornflour
70g caster sugar
240g plain flour
150g unsalted butter cut into cubes. I prefer to use this from the fridge as if it gets too warm you make paste.
120g demerara sugar

Method:
Pop the flour in a large mixing bowl along with a pinch of salt and rub in the butter a few cubes at a time. Keeping this cool will help. Once it's fairly fine, don't worry about the odd buttery lump, mix in the demerara sugar and set aside. Pop the oven on to about 160 oC for a fan oven.
Stir together the cornflower and caster sugar in a bowl.
You'll need to work through the apples quickly as they start to turn brown very quickly. I use a vegetable peeler and a small knife to peel and remove the core, and keep them chunky before slicing them at the last moment and adding the blackberries. Sprinkle over the cornflour and sugar mix and stir around the fruit. Grease a chosen baking dish, I prefer a deeper one than too shallow as the fruit always cooks down and if too thinly placed you hardly end up with anything.
Stir round the fruit again then lay it out in the dish, even it up roughly then gently spoon the topping over. Pop on a tray with a teflon sheet as the fruit can bubble up and escape during cooking.

I check mine after around 25 minutes at which point you can tell if it's looking 'perfect' ie golden-ish with a few blobs of oozy fruit round the edge - which would be done or if it still looks much like when you put it in - in which case try again in 10 minutes.

They stay hot for ages so no rush to eat but ours was demolished with a shocking volume of custard.
Even C agreed this crumble recipe was an absolute triumph. Super buttery with the sugary crunch and the syrupy fruit wasn't overly sweet. The original recipe called for more caster but we preferred it with less.

This is one I'll be returning to over and over again. It's hard to say how many official portions it makes but I'd suggest 6 for gluttons like myself. Plus it's pretty much a breakfast dish too, so make a weekend of it.

The blackberries are past their best now, we did gather a small handful for a pie but there were slim pickings indeed.

Have you been crumbling?

Take,
Sophie

This year for the first time we decided to make elderberry syrup. I'd not held much respect for those tiny berries which to me previously represented missed opportunities; elderflowers are such magical, frilly doilies of flavour and even despite a careful harvest some inevitably have turned before picking. The last attempt we made to use the elderberries was in vodka a couple of years ago and the drink was just about ok but nothing you would yearn for, even after a stinker of a week. It was a whim to pick the berries which had encouragingly hung over our fence from a neighbouring garden. There was a cascade of them, all ripe and ready to be used. Why not give it a try? Elderberries, like rosehips, are packed with vitamin C and really pep up your immune system. As a cold-loather, I'll do anything more or less to dodge getting ill.
The recipe was simple enough (although I slightly forget it now that I'd like to pin it down) but the rinsed and de-stalked berries were popped in a pan, just covered with water, simmered for a little while, I'd guess 20 minutes then strain and return the liquid to a clean pan, add the same volume of sugar. Heat to dissolve sugar, then boil a little before popping it into sterilised bottles.
ALTHOUGH I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU FIND A PROPER RECIPE INSTEAD OF MY GUESS OF WHAT I DID!!! Don't forget that you must be crystal clear about what you are picking when foraging.
What does elderberry syrup taste like? Hard to describe but absolute heaven! The sugar makes it deliciously sweet but the fruity flavour of the berries is a wonderful revelation. I've been having a spoonful each day, what a chore. I imagine it would be perfect on ice cream, rice pudding or yogurt. Our batch is a runny syrup - one year we made a syrup, albeit with rosehips, which was so thick it was almost solid which is no use at all.
My syrup bottle is pictured alongside marigolds as they are one of the only colourful things left in the garden at the moment.
Have you tried elderberry syrup? I'm won over and this will be a 'priority make' in future years.
Take care,
Sophie

Norfolk boasts an amazing range of local eateries, restaurants and producers; it's inspiring to take a closer look. We've been fortunate enough to enjoy sampling plenty of places over the years as well as to travel across the county enjoying the countryside which is essentially where it all starts, the land. Animals are reared, crops grown and the hard work is put in at the earliest stage, giving strong foundations to the chain.
I got my hands on The Norfolk Cookbook which is a celebration of all that is great about our culinary offerings throughout the county. The book is far more than a recipe book and gives a wonderful insight into many familiar places as well as introducing some new names to me. The recipes from each featured chef, restaurant and producer are clear, detailed and range from exotic to a great classic.


I've really enjoyed pouring over this book while having a coffee, getting a few ideas and oogling over the gorgeous looking dishes. The photography is superb and there's plenty of it too.
In fact the whole layout is a visual delight. I'm looking forward to getting my ingredients and cooking. On the other hand I could just book a table and eat the real deal? It sound good to me.
Many thanks to Meze Publishing for sending me this book to enjoy, I'm really impressed with the high quality content, brimming with ideas. All opinions are my own as always.
Sophie

Mmmm, they do look delightful. As it turned out the season was already a good way through, many hips were a bit manky and soft so it took more effort to not pick the bad ones. Next year I will have to be quicker off the mark.
 These little pink plastic trugs were so handy for picking them. We struggled to find all that many of the little traditional bullet hips from the dog rose, a large haul of the (right) Japanese hips.

One thing I did overlook was that it was a bit of a prickly job as roses do have thorns. So more care had to be taken. Ouch.

In a very satisfying manner, we found all we needed within walking distance of home, which gave a particularly local feeling to the forage.
The softer Japanese beauties chopped up in a couple of pulses. Far more convenient. It's worth mentioning to anyone unfamiliar with hips that the seeds are known as itching powder, so mind where they go. I have a brilliant memory of chucking some down my brother's back when we were little (for which I was told off for) and he did end up crying. So be careful.
The two recipes varied wildly with the ratios of water and sugar to hips. In my opinion neither really hit the mark. One was virtually solid and the other was like dishwater, so my advice is to judge it yourself.
For the wetter mix the recommendation here suggested 2 litres of water to 1kg of fruit, which was very watery (it suggested straining and more water again, which I declined to do), then half the amount of brown sugar as fruit.

The fruit and water mix strained through muslins. It does look grim at this point.
Then after a lonnnng drippy strain and a messy squeeze, it's back to the pan for the liquor and to stir in the sugar.
Top: the dog rose very thick syrup with white sugar (recipe from the hedgerow cookbook which I bought and am totally in love with). I did add more water at the fruit boiling stage as it did seem very sticky-dry.
We bought cute Kilner bottles especially. I haven't tried the thick one yet but the dark runny one is an absolute joy each morning, I have a tablespoon of it after breakfast. It's packed with vitamin C and a whole lotta get-up-n-go (non quantifiable 'doing you good' things).
Does it taste like roses? Not at all, but a sweet, fruity flavour. Quite a delight.
Sophie