Autumn Foraging

I made preserved lemons the other day and thought how different it was to have to buy lemons from the supermarket. I was wistful to my days in Melbourne and being able to help myself to the boxes of lemons people would leave at the bottom of their drive so passersby could help themselves.

Back here in the Highlands summer has suddenly given way to a lovely early autumn. It is dark outside as I write at the kitchen table and not yet 8pm. There may not be lemons free for the taking but there are all sorts of things to be foraged locally.

Ardersier Common, and I'm sure the village itself, is a foragers delight. I've begun, after a few years of pushing prams around the beach paths and through the Common, to have a sense of the passing seasons and what is literally ripe for the picking. The wild raspberries of summer and the elder flowers are gone for another year and now the brambles are bursting in to fruit in almost every hedgerow - in the lanes through the village, in the abandoned walled spaces along the beach path and on the Common itself. Amazingly we haven't eaten all we have picked so i have brambles in the freezer to bake with, brambles steeping in whisky and sugar to make a christmas liquer and the thoughts of a bramble jelly
for the next batch picked.

 

I have been most excited of all at finding an apple tree on the Common with plenty of good small apples. They aren't very sweet but sweet enough that the boys munched their way happily through one each. So now a whole new world of apple-y possibilities has opened up. There is a vodka based apple almost-schnapps waiting for christmas along with the bramble whisky, the possibilities of all sorts of apple bakes and this evening i threw a few in to a celeriac soup with some dried thyme from the garden and yoghurt from the local dairy. So goodbye the bright green summer garden soups and hello to the creamy concoctions of autumn orchards and freshly dug over ground.

Celeriac and Apple Soup
(adapted from a recipe by Anna Jones on the Jamie Oliver site)
2 onions, peeled and chopped
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped
6 small wild apples or equivalent, peeled and cored
1 celery stick chopped
a few dried sprigs of thyme
1.5 litres chicken stock, made with boiling water
250ml natural yoghurt

Saute the onions and celery in oil till softened
Add the celeriac, apple and thyme and cook for a couple more minutes
Add the chicken stock and simmer for 15-20 minutes till the celeriac is tender
Allow to cool a little
Stir in the natural yoghurt
Blend till smooth
Enjoy!