Saturday 6 June 2009

Elderflower


There is a divine smell in my kitchen - we are making elderflower cordial. My helper today is Charlie, and so far we've picked about 150 heads of flowers, enough to make litres and litres of cordial. Slightly worrying is the 10kg of sugar we've used, but it all gets diluted and the smell and taste of the elderflowers is so pungent that we never need use much of the concentrated cordial in each glass to release the heady memories of late spring.



We'll leave the elderflowers and citrus fruits to steep overnight and then strain and decant the syrup into the many plastic bottles I've been hoarding over the past weeks. It's lovely to know that we'll be enjoying this delicious essence of spring for months to come.