The last week has been all over the place, from glorious warm sunshine to torrential downpours, from summer to what seemingly felt like autumn with strong winds and weather warnings.
Before the weather turned into something considerably less summery, I took advantage of London's natural surroundings and harvested some '"foragable" goodies.
My little girl's elderflower picking
For years my husband talked nostalgically about "Elderflower Tizzy" - a drink his grandmother used to make with the flowers from the tree in their garden. I always presumed it would be too tricky to replicate but because the weather was so glorious and the flowers were smothering the local trees, I thought, why not ... so I gave it a go.
Taking advantage of the warm spell, I dragged my children elderflower picking. You can imagine the groaning, I can almost hear them now. "But maaaaaaaam"... etc, etc.
If you are thinking of making elderflower cordial, the best results come after a few days of very dry warm weather. Which until this week, we were experiencing. It was almost like the summers I remember from my childhood - you only ever remember the warm days.
After dry warm days, the pollen is thick and fragrant and the flower heads are heavy with it so gives more flavour. If it rains, the water washes the pollen away pollen so the flavour tends to not be so strong.
Elderflower ..... mmmmmmmm Summertime!
I was closely watching the radar picture as we had forecast heavy showers and one was flirting dangerously close to our town, so with much haste - and from them much complaining - I gathered them before the shower hit. I didn't want to see that pollen fall, literally, down the drain.
It turned out to be a bit of an adventure. Finding the tree, and then finding flowers we could actually reach! Thankfully, the enormous heavy downpour managed to swerve us - we literally had one spot of rain.
We found a suitable tree in some wasteland, in fact, we found about five and they were hanging heavy with wonderful blooms. Alas, we forgot to administer the antihistamine before we embarked on this project. We left the wasteland sneezing!
Steeping elderflower
If you were looking to try and make this yourself, before the flowers turn to bitter berries, it is super easy, but you have to get in quick before the flowers turn brown in the next couple of weeks.
I have no idea why I presumed making the cordial would be difficult, it's really not.
Anyway to make two litres of elderflower cordial (you can obviously make a smaller amount by halving the ingredients) pick about 50 blooms of elderflower, which at the moment barely make a dent into the blossoms on a reasonably sized tree.
You can find it almost anywhere; in car parks, playgrounds, roadsides, commons, fields - it is so abundant in this country at this time of year, I'm not sure why it's not in everyone's staple diet.
Once you've picked the flowers, be careful to pick all the bugs out; black fly are rather partial to an elderflower. You could shake the blooms, as the flies come out quite easily but it does remove some of the delicious pollen so I tend to find a tree that doesn't have too much black fly.
The end result - a taste of the Great British Summer!
Once home, in a large pan, dissolve 1kg of caster sugar in two litres of water. Yes, there is a lot of sugar but it's spread over two litres of delicious cordial, and it's not synthetic. Bring slowly to the boil.
Once it's dissolved, remove from the heat and plunge those deliciously fragrant blooms into the pan. Add the zest of six unwaxed lemons, the juice of five of them but slice up the last lemon and add all of that to the pan and place the lid on it.
And that is pretty much it. You just need to leave it steeping in the pan for 24 hours (OFF the heat!) but don't touch it. It's tempting to give it a stir but just leave it. You can sneak a sniff, which after a couple of hours already smells like granny's kitchen of summertime past!
After 24 hours, strain it (so you're not spitting flowers) and pour it into sterilised bottles.
Decant a small amount into a suitable glass and add sparkly water, or just water - it's so delicious.
In case you were after a stronger drink it's also delicious with fizzy wine or champagne! Mmmm!
