>It’s quite surprising what one finds when one lurks the hedgerows around these parts.

These are sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa, which is a dead give-away that it’s related to the plum).

The fruit’s quite astringent (Agree. Took me 3 hours to untwist my lips…), but it supposedly makes a good jam and – best of all – converts cheap gin into an agreeable liqueur when mixed in with sugar.

There’s a recipe over here.

(I especially like the bit ” Take a litre bottle of gin and drink half a litre…)

And they make shillelaghs out of the wood. If you’re in Ireland, that is…

23 Oct This entry was published on 23 October, 2007 at 07:11. It’s filed under Mainz and tagged gin, sloe. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.