Pontack part 2 and a lovely curry

First up, the second half of making the Pontack sauce...the elderberries and vinegar emerged after four hours in a very low oven. Out with the potato masher to ease the last bit of moisture from the sieved berries. The spice mixture is black pepper, mace, cloves, allspice and a knob of fresh ginger. Pam's recipe calls for shallots, but I substituted with a couple of sliced red onions.

Into the pan it all goes, for around half an hour's simmering. Then you strain again, return the clear liquid to the pot and boil hard for five minutes. Then leave to cool and bottle up the purple liquor. It tastes fruity and vinegary and not quite like anything else. I'll use it to pep up beef stews - Pam says it's also good with venison and liver.

I had planned a mushroom and stilton pie for supper, but as it actually felt like summer yesterday, I changed my mind and went for a favourite recipe adapted from a Vicky Bhogul special, from her book A Year of Cooking Like Mummyji. I love Vicky's writing and recipes. This one is based on her Green Masala Roast Chicken Breasts. The original is fab - but I fancied an egg and potato curry with allotment pots.

A mild summer egg and potato curry

2 green chillis (more if you're not into mild)

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tbsp whole coriander seeds

2 tsp garam masala

4 cloves garlic

2 spring onions

a thumb sized knob of fresh ginger

3 tbsp yoghurt

2 tbsp oil - I use groundnut

1 tsp salt

Roughly chop your chillis, garlic and onions and bung these, plus all the other ingredients, into a food processor. Whiz. You end with a masala that looks like - yes! - wallpaper paste. But it smells fab.

Boil your potatoes - I used about six medium sized Shetland Black - they're a wonderful purple colour. You have to watch them carefully at the end of the cooking time as they are very floury and tend to break up if you're not quick to whip them off the heat. In another pan, hard boil three eggs. Then put the masala in a pan, add the halved eggs and the potatoes and heat through. Serve with freshly chopped coriander.

Pudding was part of my foraging haul - blackberry and apple crumble. I used to loathe crumble because we got it three times a week at school. And it was a very nasty crumble. But I'm slowly coming back to it after many years of avoiding it like the plague. I stewed the garden apples very gently with a bit of butter and some golden castor sugar. Once they were done, I just bunged the blackberries on top to soak up some of the heat from the apples.

My crumble mix is flour, butter, sugar and ground almonds. Into the oven at gas mark 4 for around 40 minutes. Serve with fresh cream. Yep, I really am coming round to crumble.

Preserves day

Up early this morning at the start of my preserves day...I snapped up Pam Corbin's River Cottage Preserves handbook as soon as it was published last year, but failed to make one of the most intriguing recipes - Pontack sauce. It's a mixture of elder berries, vinegar and spices. So I hiked up to Tesco to get cider vinegar and sugar, as I was planning a repeat of last year's fabulous blackberry vinegar too.

There's an elder tree in the garden, so armed with a plastic bowl and secateurs, I grabbed several bunches of berries and gently squidged them off their stalks. Next door neighbour Tom is has other plans for the berries - he's going to make some wine.

The first stage of the Pontack involves a very slow cook of the berries steeped in vinegar, so into the oven they went. Meanwhile I was on to stage 2 of the day - off to the Paddock for blackberries. The Paddock is a lovely little nature reserve tucked off Ferry Bridge Lane, and last year the blackberry crop was superb. It's pretty good this year too, but the first thing I spotted was sloes.

I think sloes are normally more a September crop, but there were quite a few ripe berries which I bagged to put in the freezer. I spotted some by the allotments last Sunday, so I'll gather more tomorrow and make sloe gin during the week. On to today's main harvest...

The berries looked really good. But I'd stupidly forgotten that nettles love growing round brambles and I was wearing sandals. But stung toes and scratched fingers make it feel like you've really worked. I picked for just under an hour, visiting my favourite bushes. And I noticed that my hands smelled faintly of vanilla - not a scent I'd ever associated with blackberries before.

Back home, there was a pleasant vinegary smell coming from the oven. My bramble harvest weighed in at 1.5 kilos - brilliant! Pam's fruit vinegar recipe calls for 1k of fruit which is steeped for 5 days in 600ml cider vinegar. You just press the fruit gently so that the juices mingle with the vinegar. I'll do a later post on what happens next.

The allotment toms are ripening beautifully - they look so pretty. The tastiest are the orange ones - I'm kicking myself for not transferring the labels into the ground. The mini cucumbers are doing well too.

Out in the garden, my oriental lily - an impulse buy from B&Q - is heavenly. Smells divine and the flowers are magnificent.