On 23 Sep, 18:12, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
In article ,
David in Normandy writes:
|
| Thanks Nick. I've just eaten a few berries and yes they are quite bitter
| but with a definite plum taste / texture. Crunching a kernel I could
| also definitely taste marzipan/almond. So it looks like a 100% match to
| your description.
|
| My mouth is still quite dry now, several minutes after eating them. They
| are quite moorish in a strange savoury sort of way.

They have that effect - now join the very select club of people who like
to eat sloes raw :-)

| So it just leaves the question of whether to pick them now or let them
| ripen a bit more. They seem "nearly" ripe being quite flesh but they
| resist being pulled. I guess leaving them longer would probably mean the
| birds eating them first.

Maybe. The birds typically don't go for them until quite late, as
they don't contain much carbohydrate. I would pick them as and when
convenient - traditionally, they were left until the first frost,
but that isn't essential.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Pick them now if they are just slightly fleshy feeling - they don't
just fall off the bushes like plums or apples, you have to actually
pick them. I get mine near Melrose and I've never in 30 years seen
them so good.

On making sloe gin, the accepted technique in this day and age is to
put them in the freezer and let them unthaw slowly - that breaks the
skins and enables the juice extraction. If you are prepared to pick
enough (2 of us picked over a dozen pounds in under an hour the other
day), a good wine can be made with sloes - a bit of extra fruit is
required to enhance to the flavour. The recipe I found starts off
with 60 lbs of sloes !!

Rob