Rosehip syrup

We moved into our house last year and in the garden was a wonderful old rambling rose with a scary arsenal of thorns. The flowers are very pretty but I was particularly excited when later in the year it displayed a huge amount of brilliantly scarlet hips. Great, thought I, I'll make rosehip syrup. However instead of actually making the syrup, I just thought about it every time I looked at the plant, and before long the hips had gone.

I was determined that this year I would not make the same mistake and although I really have left it a little too late and half the rosehips are wrinkled and split, today I finally picked the lovely red hips and made rosehip syrup for the first time.

I used a recipe from 'Wild garlic, gooseberries .. and me' by Dennis Cotter, although the premise is simple, boil the hips in water, strain, repeat and then boil the juice with sugar, but I love this book. It has wonderful stories to accompany tasty recipes and the photos make everything look divine, it also has a great chapter on 'wild pickings' for whence the rosehip syrup came.

So I blitzed the rosehips in the blender, boiled up the resulting mush;












strained through some muslin, added my sugar and I was done!

I was quite surprised by the taste, not sure what I was expecting but it is so similar to quince jelly with a bit more of a flowery taste. Now just have to figure out some nice ways of eating it!