... A broken heart, perhaps. And, for quite some time, I have been intending to talk about them, but festivities got in the way. And yes, I know haws are terribly en vogue at the moment thanks to the nouveau-croute HFW and, in fact, the Independent. Still, I have been munching on haws for years, and even as a child I would pick the delicate, bitter spring hawthorn leaves as an en-passant salad of sorts. It was only last autumn though that I finally attempted to do more with haws than nibble studiously at the edges.
I have foraged, also, since childhood - and so, whilst making a late autumn visit to my mother in Cambridgeshire, I broached the subject, as we passed some scrubby bushes which still bore clutches of the little fruit, despite the frost, and I grabbed as many handfuls as I could - her hat made a convenient basket, though I fear she caught a chill.
Talk then turned to crabs, and the thought that I may be able to catch a few before the frosts turned them to mush, and so off we went. Foraging with my mother, as everything else with my mother, is not straightforward, and so our hunt for crab-apples involved a drive through the failing light at break-neck speed to find her 'favourite' tree, tucked in the hedge by a busy main road, where I had to scrabble on my hands and knees (to the shock, I am sure, of the countless passing motorists).
What to do with haws and crabs? That's a question any man should consider deeply. The answer, of course, is preservation. So out came the trusty preserving pan, the jars, and associated paraphenalia, and I indulged in some preserving.
Many of the haws became a sort of chutney/sauce/paste, the rest I simply nibbled at in times of leisure.
This part of the process is always a strain, especially when you don't have any suitable upside-down chairs (the traditional device for straining).
The best thing about preserving is the end, when you can admire the stack of juicy jars - witness the haw sauce, crab apple jelly, and my highly experimental spiced pumpkin and crab apple jellyjam - invented in the pages of this blog, an an unexpectedly lurid orange...
... Which accompanied this fantastic spread at my brother's place just before Christmas.
Happy New Year to you all, and may 2009 truly be a year of culinary adventures. Cheers!
