marycontrary

thanks Suzi!

Hi Suzi, do you have any recipes for spice crab apples? You need such a lot for crab apple jelly... What are people's policies on gathering food not on common ground? The crab apples I found the other day technically belonged to the local university but I don't reckon they were really in high demand. I love the word 'scrumping' to refer to stealing people's apples from their orchards, it reminds me of the 1950s storybooks I grew up on, full of mischievous young boys in flannel shorts and girls called Susan. Maybe I should start 'Poaching: the thread'

Hello there, I think fruit picking memories are particularly vivid if you are young, especially if they have that air of danger/illegality/sugary-sweetness around them... Also I remember the smugness of being much taller than my little sister and being able to reach the best berries...

Hello everyone, as I'm feeling lazy I will break up my memories into 'pleasures' and 'hazards' bullet points: Pleasures: -discovering a sun-lit tree tunnel overladen with a bounty of free food: damsons, blackberries, crab apples and elderberries, just after maxing out my overdraft -gathering blackberries on the moor with my grandmother while looking for 'fairyfolk' -homemade summer pudding -spicy crab apple jelly -sloe gin -sugared chestnut sweets -chestnut rice -cosy and rather smug feeling of preserving/pickling/drying produce before winter, harking back to the idea that 'at least I will survive a calamity' -discovering just now on wikipedia that sambuca is made with elderberries and anise... Hazards: -nearly falling down a cliff in pursuit of the best berries -ditto with a disused mine-shaft -discovering on wikipedia that raw elderberries are poisonous and have a 'mild cyanide toxicity' -speeding down a hill on your bike and trying to pick blackberries at the same time (you end up with a very messy looking face) -being pursued by irate farmer and his mad dog after poaching his apples (I was only 7 and had very hazy notions of private property and tresspass...) Does anyone else have similar memories from around the world? Also any other ideas of what you can do with too many crabapples, damsons and elderberries apart from that mentioned above? (Yes I know crab apples are barely palatable raw, but they make great jelly and in Britain we have been eating them for thousands of years before more fancy varieties arrived...)

Anyone have any recipes for making iron eggs? Are they ever used in particular dishes or are they just a snack to be eaten on their own? Thanks, Emily

Hi April, yes they definately sound like the 'iron eggs' you describe. Is it possible to make them yourself, or do you need special equipment/access to a secret recipe? From a google search, it seems the eggs are boiled and then dried 3 times until they turn jet black, the liquid they are boiled in apparently contains fermented bean sauce, soy, sugar, and various spices, also I read that they come in different flavours ranging from sweet to spicy. Does anyone else have any information? Thanks

Hi Dejah, thanks for the reply,I think it sounds more like low shui dan, as I have had tea eggs before and these didn't taste like them, they did have a subtle soy sauce flavour.I just love the way that something as natural and down-to-earth as an egg can be transformed into something so seemingly artificial and futuristic looking, packed into plastic like candy! These are really hard to find in UK Chinatowns- are they very easy to find in Taiwan or on the mainland?

I forgot to add- they are already cooked and have no shell on them, just vacuum-packed in plastic

Hi everyone, I was give these eggs by a Taiwanese friend of mine. They are quails eggs (although you can also get duck egg versions). The outside is dark brown and has the texture of shiny firm plastic. The inside is light brown and tastes creamy, mildly spicy and not salty at all (so not like the preserved eggs I have had in the past), the aftertaste is delicious, almost like liquorice. Unlike 1000 year eggs they don't have that (lovely? frightening?) ancient egg flavour/fragrance/texture, infact they no longer resemble eggs at all. She has given me some in the past that are almost black rather than brown. They seem to be snacks, but does anyone know other uses for them? I am addicted... PS I have some photos but uploading pictures seems devilishly difficult on this forum...