of strawberry trees

"Hah!" I hear you people laugh, "now this country bumpkin is trying to tell us strawberries grow on trees! He's been on the funny mushrooms again!" Well no, not exactly, but this is my latest discovery on my search for free edibles gathered from the wild.

I had long noticed these evergreen trees with colourful strawberry like fruit growing on them, but assumed they were only good for the local bird population. In fact the fruit of the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, also known as Irish Strawberry or Killarney strawberry due to the fact that they grow in the south west of Ireland too, is perfectly edible. Ok, it's not as tasty as a strawberry. In fact Pliny the Elder explains the Latin name unedo as meaning unum edo, I eat one, referring to the fact that you really aren't tempted to have another one once you've had one.

The fruit, known as Corbezzolo in Italian, doesn't taste bad raw, just slightly sweet, a bit bland and very pithy. In fact with it's tiny seeds it has a similar consitency to strawberries too. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Tree) only the Portuguese and the Italians utilize the fruit to make liqueurs and jams. This is what it looks like:



I had a recipe in my Ligurian preserve recipe book, which I thought was worth trying out for a jam. I have no idea what the nutritional value of the fruit is, but we collected just under a kilo to see what we could do.



Here's the recipe: to each kilo of strawberry tree fruit you need 400g sugar and a small glass of alchermes liqueur.

Slowly boil the fruit with a splash of water until soft. Press through a tomato mill and reheat together with the sugar and the liqueur. According to the book you are then to let it simmer for a couple of hours, but mine would have turned to caramel by then. 45 minutes was more than sufficient.

As far as the liqueur is concerned, it's a traditional Italian red herbal liqueur. It went out of fashion, when people discovered that the red colour was made from crushed insects. Modern commercial versions of the drink use some chemical food dye instead, and people prefer that. Isn't it odd that people rather take in some artificial colourant than a flavourless natural dye, just because it's made from some creepy crawly... As far as the actual flavour components of alchermes is concerned, they are cinnamon bark, cloves, vanilla, coriander seeds and nutmeg. You can make your own version, by steeping those in alcohol for a couple of days, then filter and add sugar and water to get to about 30% alcohol and leave for another month or so. If you want the traditional red colour, you can add maybe some beetroot juice.



On our wild food gathering trip we also picked some more juniper berries

as well as more chestnuts, pine kernels and even a few mushrooms. The latter I haven't positively identified yet, so might not get eaten.

Finally here a picture of our chilli loving kitten Rooney. She has curled herself up inside a flowerpot with a chilli plant.

of juniper, pine kernels and castles

Although we don't have any pressing commitments most of the time we do try to stick to some sort of a routine every day, just to give our lives some structure. In the morning we wake up around 8ish. Sorry let me rephrase that: in the morning we get woken up by the cats around 8ish (if we are lucky).

Incidentally, if you've been wondering what's happened to our cats in the meantime, at the last count there were still 5 of them. We have refused any further applications for assylum and have turned back boats filled with cat refugees at sea to return back to Cat Land. Our original cat, Dot is only occasionally visiting now, there's far too much happening in the refugee camp for her liking. She's still cross that we've hung on to her daughter, who was supposed to have left home months ago! The daughter, Mickey, is most attached to us and is home most nights. I go out of the door last thing at night to call her in, and she comes running around some corner. Tigger, who arrived a few months ago as a skinny rake is gaining weight and looking well now. We're going to have to have her neutered next, she seems ready to send her kittens into the world. Luckily we have a friend who will do that for us, as we couldn't possibly afford it ourselves. Of her two kittens, Rooney (named because she has huge ears, just like the footballer) is the more friendly. She purrs happily and loudly if you only as much as look at her. Her brother or sister, we're still not sure yet, we aptly named Senna, because she is as fast as the Formula 1 driver. Apart from running away fast as soon as you move she counts eating as one of her hobbies. Despite the obvious energy consumption of running away a lot she/he seems to develop a double chin already!

Anyway, I digress. We start the day (after feeding the cats...) with a good breakfast, which is usually Susan's job to make: Juice, from our newly aquired juicer, muesli, wholemeal bread with homemade jam and coffee. If the cats get me up particularly early, Mickey will sit on my head purring, I will do the first part of the breakfast.

Next I will sit down on the computer to see if anyone's been sending me any messages or if there've been any other exciting news, while Susan clears up the kitchen from the night before. Unless there is then anything pressing to do, I'm quite happy to lounge about like that and read the on-line newspaper or so, but Susan tends to get ants in her pants roundabout then and says she needs to go out for a walk to wake up properly.

Today she went on a quite a short roundwalk, the weather was still beautiful and clear, and came back asking me what now? I've gone quite Italian when it comes to going for walks. I don't actually mind going for a walk, but I like it to have some purpose: going from A to B, i.e. to the shops, even if they are an hour or so away, discovering something new or, most importantly, foraging for wild food.

So off we went armed with a couple of bags and jars down the Via Francigena. Our village lies right on the pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome as walked by Archbishop Segeric the Serious in 995 ad or so. Following this path we headded down the hill towards the nearby city of Sarzana.

Halfway down, I never cease to be surprised, as you leave some woods, on a rocky basalt outcrop, to come across the extensive castle ruins of the Castello della Brina.



Every year archeologists of Pisa university dig up a bit more of it. They are still not sure when the place was actually built. Written records go back to the 10th Century, but they have found items going back to Roman and even Etruscan times. It was destroyed in the 15th century, when it was a castle of the Bishop of nearby Luni. The attackers really bore a bit of a grudge, because they raised the place to the ground and toppled the round tower.


The rocky sub-soils on this hill provide a home for quite a unique flora, such as box, laurel, sloe, Aleppo pines and juniper. So today we were chiefly after juniper berries. In small quantities they are good used in pickles and cabbage dishes. However I'm after making a type of gin, juniper being the main ingredient of course (from Dutch Genever = juniper - short gin). Lacking a still it'll be more of a gin liqueur or 'gineprino' as they call it in Italy.


As we walked on we also found a whole handful of pine kernels, at least €10 worth I reckon. They are quite a pain to gather and even worse to then afterwards shell, but at €3 for some 30 grams or so, it's worth it. We still have a bit of basil growing on the land, so I can make an authentic pesto.

As we walked back I couldn't stop sniffing my fingers, which smelled gorgeously aromatic of juniper and pine resin. (that was until I had an itchy bottom and added a bit of an earthy note...)

In the end we walked all the way to Sarzana (1 3/4 hours if you don't gather anything), because we needed a couple of things from the shop. By the time we got back it was time to think of dinner, which is my job.