Stormy Weather

It's been a windswept week here at Mother's Ruin with gale force winds and driving rain. Mother's Ruin HQ has remained resolute and upright  throughout the tempest.

There was lots of local storm damage though, the worst being that the 200 year old mulberry tree that provided the fruit for this year's mulberry gin was hit by a falling bay tree and lost about half of her crown.

Tree surgeons have been summoned to the scene, and hopefully the old girl will make a recovery. Though Mulberry gin may be in limited supply next year.

Indoors the bottling of the Seville orange rum has begun. The colour of warm slightly cloudy honey with the dark and bitter sweet taste of marmalade. I'd made it as an attempt to create a Cointreau type liqueur, but it is it's own tawny miracle.

Seville oranges tart, deeply aromatic and in season at the darkest and coldest part of the year. Just when thoughts of Southern Spain and its golden heart might be the only thing to pull you through the dreich  grey British winter to spring time. And here packed with vitamin C to ward off seasonal ills, I bring you...

Mother's Cuban Hurricane

Ingredients: (per person)

• 2oz Seville orange rum                          
  
• 2 oz dark Cuban rum
• 2 oz passion fruit juice
• 1 oz orange juice
• Juice of a half a lime
• 1 Tbsp grenadine
• dash or two of orange bitters
• orange zest to garnish

Preparation

• Squeeze juice from half a lime into a cocktail shaker over some ice.
• Pour the remaining ingredients into the cocktail shaker.
• Shake well.
• Strain into a long glass
• Garnish with a curl of orange zest.

Music to pick sloes by

It has come to my attention via the acerbic comments of friends that I have become a sloe gang-master. I can spot laden branches at 100 yards, and nothing gladdens my blue stained heart more than the sight of industrious hedgerow gathering.

In the hopes of comforting my scratched and shredded troops, and spurring them on to epic picking feats I have created the 

Sloe Gin Play List

The Sloes of Penybanc  Tony Furtado

Prickle Eye Bush Bellowhead

Sloe Gin  Tim Curry

Sloe Eyed Devil Show Verlen

Happy now?

And as all troops march on a full stomach, an intoxicating recipe. Combining two of my favourite things, sloes and jelly - I give you...

Sloe Jelly

Take 8g or 4 leaves of the best grade gelatin you can afford and soften it in some cold water. Meanwhile heat 150mls of water and 100g of granulated white sugar. When all the sugar has dissolved add the softened gelatin and continue to heat until the gelatin too is dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Not so cold that it starts to set, or too hot so the alcohol in the precious sloe gin you are about to add is at risk of evaporating, as that would never do. So about 4-5 mins should do it. Then add 350mls of sloe gin. Pour into your jelly moulds and leave to set. It will take at least 4 hours to set, better to leave overnight if you can.

Then, eat up! It's fortifying for the heart and good for nails and hair too!!  

Blooming lovely

Autumn has drawn in the days and the early morning sloe picking is cool and damp. Accompanied by some curious locals we have picked 150lbs of sloes from the nearby lanes.

It's an incredible spot with handful after handful of violet bloomed sloes. So the especially muddy condition of the path, and the extra pricklishness of these particular bushes is well worth it for the hoard gained.

We also have 250lbs of sweet and fragrant Lyth Valley  damsons picked from the young trees in the  orchard at Park End Farm, so the freezers are full to the lids and next year's sloe and damson gin supplies are assured.

In honour of the blue blush, the ferocious thorns, the tart and tenacious sloe - a recipe from fabulous British independent gin makers Sipsmith

The Sloe Gin Spritz
35ml Sloe Gin
25ml Lillet Blanc
20ml lemon juice
15ml sugar syrup
3 drops plum bitters
3 drops orange bitters
Sparkling wine
Pour all the ingredients except the wine into a large wine glass with plenty of ice and top up with sparkling wine. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

Mother's Lovely Pear

From the top most branches of Agatha's best pear tree came the King of the Pears. Sweet, fat bottomed, blushing and freckled - deeelish! The perfect pear picked via the use of a long pole with an opening and closing claw at the end operated by string. Mechanisation comes to Mother's Ruin.

The Pear,
gift from the Gods according to Homer, one of the oldest and most digestible fruits. Sublime in unadulterated form, but I just couldn't leave them alone and they are now chopped and steeping in overproof bourbon with bitter herbs to make pear and almond cocktail bitters.

In a spare moment I went to the Westmorland County Show to gaze upon the wonder of the WI  tent. The cakes, flowers and knitting, crowned by a the fabulous gleaming bottles and jars in the gin and jam tournaments. This is how the professionals do it!

And then, just so I could scream and shout a bit a few rounds of magnificent Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling 

A refreshing cocktail for steadying the nerve before competitions and tests of all sorts

A Pear of Cloves
(Brian O'Neill)

1-1/2 oz pear vodka,
 1/2 oz purée of fresh pear
 1/2 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 oz clove-infused simple syrup (see recipe below)
3 to 4 thin slices of pear
 Ice



Mix:
In a shaker, muddle the pear slices before adding the remaining ingredients. Fill with ice and shake until cold and frothy. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a slice pear.

Mother's Bitter Helper

Like Janus Mother is looking back in time to the days when bitter medicinal tinctures were added to spirits creating the first cocktail - the Bittered Sling, and also forward to the boom in cocktails and the modern cocktail bitter. In this lucent state she has been gathering barks, roots and leaves (thank you Baldwins ) - sourcing over-proof hooch (easier said than done) and wielding a sharp paring knife.

 

Combining a bitter base containing herbs such as wormwood, quinine, dandelions and gentian with a heart of warm spice and a fruit top note - bitters add complexity and balance to cocktails. The very opposite of the sparkler and flamingo garnish good bitters impart depth, darkness and intrigue. I'm in the middle of a series of experiments to create the perfect bitters - Mother's Bitter Helper. I've found the ideal bottles, looking like they might contain poison and with a handy dropper for precision cocktail construction.

   For the bitters enthusiast,

The Modern Cocktail

1 1/2 oz good  bourbon

 1 tsp dark rum
1/2 tsp pernod or absinthe
1/2 tsp lemon juice
2 dashes orange bitters

Combine ingredients in a shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well, and strain into a cocktail glass.

A matter of taste and tractors

Our damson gin has a gold star from the British Great Taste awards, with lots of good comments from the judges on the depth of flavour and good balance between fruit, gin and sugar. It was up against 10,000 other food and drink products for some coveted stars and was the only damson gin to take any award. It was good to get feedback and helps me make some plans to aim for a rare as hen's teeth 3 star award.

And up in the orchard in the Lyth Valley home of the world's finest damsons, the fruit is beginning to ripen and slowly a blue blush steals across the trees. On a recent visit I took a day off from liqueur production to hitch a ride on the Two Bryan's (infamous) Tractor Run. Hurtling over the Howgills , along Tebay Valley up and over the Shap fells was exhilarating. I had the honour of being in the company of Viking tractor god Bryan from Park End Farm.

Meanwhile in East London the gooseberry and blackcurrant crops are finished and the freezer is stuffed to the gills, with the aim of extending the summer fruit liqueur season well into the autumn.  I'm running out of space in the house and beginning to think about how to grow the business. I have spotted a small mechanical filter pump used by small scale wine producers to clear sediment that might be just the thing to speed up the process of decanting the alcohol off the fruit. The Industrial Revolution is on its' way to Walthamstow.

In honour of the combustion engine I bring you the,

Dirt n' Diesel 

(by Cale Green from Seattle)

2 oz Cruzan Blackstrap Rum
1/2 oz Fernet Branca
1/2 oz Demerara Simple Syrup
1/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

A Murder of Mulberries

A 200 year old Mulberry tree in a nearby garden has generously donated it's juicy scarlet bounty to Mother's Ruin. With the help Nick and Siobhan and baby Ethan we discovered the only way to pick mulberries is the the old fashioned way. Shaking and tapping the high heavily hung branches, and pouncing on the ripe berries when they tumbled down. Staining hands and sheets, a few hours work gave up enough berries for a small batch of gin which after only a few days has turned a deep glowing ruby red. I think the tart and slightly aromatic fruit is going to be a perfect match for the gin.

 

It's possible that this old tree is related to the first mulberry trees that were imported to Britain in the 1600's by King James who was keen to rival the Chinese silk trade by starting one of his own. Unfortunately for the silk worms he imported the wrong kind of mulberry, as they only eat the leaves of  white mulberries. Fortunately for us he imported the black mulberry which has the juiciest and most flavoursome fruit. 

The mulberry tree is a place for myths and story tellers. The fictional story teller Kai Lung unrolls his mat under a mulberry tree. Star crossed lovers Pyramus and Thisbe love and die under the mulberry tree, with the colour of mulberry juice stained forever blood red in honour of their grief. Modern story tellers words without borders share a piece of writing about an Iranian mulberry tree.

 A Mulberry and lavender cocktail

• 20 medium sized Mulberries (or 10 large ones)*
  
• 1 tablespoon Lavender Simple Syrup
• 2 ounces vodka
• 5 mint leaves
• Drizzle of honey
• Fresh lemon juice, 1/2 lemon
• Soda water, fill

 Combine mulberries, mint, small drizzle of honey and simple syrup in cocktail shaker. Muddle until mulberries are juiced. Add ice, vodka and lemon juice. Shake and strain pulp using a sieve. Pour over ice in glass and garnish with extra mulberries and lavender sprig. Said to cleanse the blood, act against aging and packed full of vitamin C and Iron, surely the perfect summer tonic.