Wild plums and mushrooms...

I went foraging last weekend. I didn’t set out to, but I found a damson tree flooded with ripe dark blue fruit hanging low in the hedgerow along the lane in Wales. Wild plums, it was too good a chance to miss so I collected a couple of pounds to make some jelly.

I didn’t have a muslin jelly bag so used a fine sieve to strain the juice of the cooked damsons before making the jelly. Obviously you don’t put the fruit into a jelly, otherwise it would be a jam, but the sieve worked just fine and I had a little over a pint of deep red damson juice to make my jelly with. It tasted very tart but the sugar would sweeten it up a little, not too much though, damson jelly is meant to be sharp.

I’d never made damson jelly before but jellies and jams are all pretty much the same, one pound of fruit to one pound of sugar, a little water, some lemon juice, and a knob of butter to disperse what jam makers call ‘the scum’ - such a horrible term for the tiny sugar bubble froth that forms on the top of the jam.

The important thing is to boil the sugar and fruit mixture on a high heat until it reaches the setting point, 105 degrees centigrade no more and no less and then to pour it into sterilised jars whilst it’s still warm. My damsons made about one and a half pounds of jelly. I’ve made blackberry and strawberry jam and now damson jelly over the last few weeks and I know I’ll end up giving most of it away.

As a bonus though, when I was collecting my damsons I bent down to pick up a fruit I’d dropped and noticed some mushrooms growing in the field behind the hedge. I didn’t make jam with them, I just fried them in some garlic butter.