How to use free berries to shake off winter colds

Sat, 29 Sep, 2018 - 01:00

Ward off winter colds and ’flu with free berries growing on our hedgerows, says Valerie O’Connor

Finally, the conversation can begin, the one we’ve been avoiding all this time, before my time and yours, but it’s the big hungry elephant in the room.

Having seen the recently released Black 47 by director Lance Daly, the murmurs in the audience were mostly “this is depressing”.

The feeling has always been that it’s too soon to talk about the Famine, and anybody brave enough to take on the subject for the big screen is faced with the mammoth task of making the bleakest of true stories, interesting enough to attract audiences who, education aside, still want to be entertained.

And so a decent revenge story was told, yet the tone seems just right. It’s not sexy, it’s not cool, it’s downright miserable and tells a small aspect of this epic tale that wiped out half of our population.

Jim Broadbent’s character, an English lord who claims to love the country having lived here most of his life let’s slip how convenient the potato blight was for everyone who wanted to see less and less Irish inhabit the land — “made it all very easy for us really”.

Let’s be honest, how much do we really know about this disaster? Maybe a little more than our neighbours across the water. In an Ireland where you can now buy smoked elephant garlic and kiwi berries in supermarkets, can we ever fathom what it was like to have to go foraging for nettles, not because it was cool but because that was the only thing that wouldn’t have you shot?

In attempts to start up community gardens and as I wax lyrical about mackerel being the best fish there is, resistance to growing food and eating free and cheap food can be traced back to the collective pain of the not-too-distant Famine.

Happily, we forage again for what’s free and ours, and the foods that are there for the taking should be taken for they are laden with goodness.

Let me segue from that less-than cheerful introduction into the benefits of making one of the year’s most important recipes. I love, love elderberries and I know not whether or not our unfortunate ancestors ever picked and ate them, for they are a bitter berry and we have the sugar that they did not have to sweeten the tartness.

It’s said that ingesting just a teaspoon of these ruby coloured little gems will ward off colds and ’flu for the winter season if you can find the time to make this delicious syrup.

The elderberry is the mature fruit that ripens over summer when the flowers that we love are left to be on the tree. It’s a great immune booster and children will actually want to drink it. I love a few spoons in a mug of hot water but nobody’s going to stop you topping it up with prosecco, gin or champagne.

A spoonful down the hatch is the easiest way to get it in and don’t fret about the sugar, it’s a necessary preserver of the vitamins present in this, nature’s present.

Get some bottles, any bottles and sterilise them by washing them well and putting them through the dishwasher or into the oven at 160ºC for 10 minutes. Clean bottles will make your efforts keep for years.

Eventually, it will ferment but this takes a long time.

Go out and get those berries, they won’t be there forever. Pick as many as you can, bring a tall helper as the best berries are always at the top of the branches.

Read the recipe fully before you go foraging, so it makes sense.

Put the elderberries into a large pot and cover them with just enough water, a few green fellas will rise to the surface, get rid of them. Bring the pot to the boil and reduce the heat, leave to simmer for 20 minutes

Line a large strainer with muslin and sit it over a bog bowl and pour the cooked berries into it. Leave to strain and then squeeze out the squidgy mess, getting out as much liquid as you can.

Measure the juice and pour it back into the rinsed pot

For each 500ml/1pint of juice add 300g/12oz sugar and 4 cloves. However, if you don’t like cloves it’s best to leave them out as their flavour intensifies over time.

Bring the mixture to the boil and cook it for 10 minutes at a simmer.

Have your sterilised and preferably still hot bottles at the ready. Be careful doing this and have someone to help you by holding the funnel and bottles in place.

Pour the syrup into the bottles carefully, if you hold the funnel slightly out of the bottle it is less likely to splash you.

Pop the lids on to the bottles and wipe them all down with a damp cloth. Store in a dark cupboard for months or years.