Hawthorn - Bread & Cheese
Hawthorn is a common sight in the British Isles, yet it is often overlooked as a very useful source of food and medicine. The omnipresent Hawthorn announces its awakening from Winter with little snowflake flowers in spring and lipstick red berries in Autumn, just before it goes back to sleep.
The leaves are long, roughly oval and lobed into three segments, dark green above and paler below with a tough feel, the stem is tinged pink. Flowers are five-petalled and white (although sometimes described as creamy and tinged pink); they appear as flat, spraying clusters. Dark red berries appear in autumn.
The berries are nutritive and have amazing medicinal properties, as they are considered “food for the heart”. The tree has a strong history with magic and enchantments and has many traditions and folklore associated with it, but then it is after all considered the fairy tree amongst hedge witches.
Historically, the shoots and unopened flower buds given name was ‘bread and cheese’. Though much healthier, unfortunately they taste of neither. The berries, known as Haws, are much like mild apples, but the flesh is quite dense and dry. These make a good chutney to eat with cheese and a great ketchup substitute. Haws can also be used in the production of country wines and homemade schnapps. In addition, leaves, flowers, and berries can be used to make a herbal tea.
This recipe is fairly straight forward to make.
- Place large quantity of ripe hawthorn berries (haws) in a saucepan
- Cover in water or apple juice, but don’t add too much as you will need to dehydrate the purée
- Simmer for about 15 minutes & allow cooling
- Mash the pulp briefly then rub through a sieve
- Pour the strained pulp onto baking paper on a baking tray less than 1 cm thick
- Place in the oven for approximately 2-4 hours. Leave to dry in the oven at its lowest setting
- Leave until the pulp is dry and leathery and can be peeled off the trays
- Cut or tear into pieces & store in an airtight jar
- If dried and stored properly, they will easily last for a year.
Hawthorn Harvest and Recipes.
Making hawthorn fruit leather
The trees stand on the threshold between our world and the Otherworld. They’re under the protection of the fairies, so you risk punishment if you cut them down. The only time you could bring the branches indoors was on May Day. It spelt disaster to do so at any other time. This is why you might often find a lone hawthorn tree seemingly standing in an inopportune place. No one wants to uproot them without the fairies’ permission.
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