The joy of the hunt this time of year when Blackthorn bushes are bursting with sloes. Is the jelly worth all the fuss? I'm here to tell you - YES!

'Tis the season for my favorite confiture fruit. While it's recommended to pick sloes after the first frost for the best flavor (it has been unseasonably warm here in France this past October), I recently had the opportunity to harvest a few kilos at a friend's home. I'll just fool them by popping them into the freezer. Voilà - a quick bout of winter. These little beauties will never know the difference. Sloes look like a blueberry but are the fruit of the Blackthorn bush. They can be found in most regions that experience freezing temperatures. They are hardy shrubs to say the least. With their dagger-like thorns, picking sloe berries is slow work. You can't rush the process. I channel my ancient gathering instinct as I fill my basket little by little, keeping my eyes on the prize: a garnet-colored jelly. It will be worth the labor investment. I promise. Prunus spinosa or Blackthorn is a species of flowering bush in the rose family. It's native to Europe and often found as a hedgerow in Great Britain. They can be found all over southwest France. The bushes keep on giving so you can pick the fruit for months and still leave plenty behind for the birds. Although I have to say, I've never seen a bird eat a sloe. One taste and you'll think, "Why am I wasting my time picking that?!" Sloes have a powerful sour bite that moves quickly to astringent as the fruit seems to pull all the moisture from your mouth. You are left with a severe pucker. It's a bit startling but not toxic to consume. Truly. All the deliciousness comes when you prepare sloes. Begin with making sloe gin or a non-alcoholic sloe cordial and then use the spent fruit for confiture. After that, I use the twice-spent berries for ink or as a dye bath. Only then does the fruit land in my compost pile. The flowers of the Blackthorn bush are one of the first to burst onto the scene in spring. They bloom in clusters with each flower about 1.5 cm or 1/2 inch in diameter, with five creamy-white petals. I started three bushes from tiny shoots for my new garden's hedgerow. Sloe gin is a liqueur made by infusing gin with sloes and sugar and it is very easy to make. Pick the sloes when they are ripe - about a kilo or two's worth or 3-4 pounds. Wash and pop the fruit into the freezer for 24 hours if you picked them before the first frost. The skins will split and allow all the fruit's goodness to infuse into the liqueur. Next, place the frozen sloes into a large jar. Add a few cupfuls of sugar and one medium-sliced lemon. Pour over a bottle of gin. Some folks add a few cloves and a cinnamon stick. It's a personal taste. Seal the jar and shake. Allow it to sit in a dark pantry for 3 months or so. Shake the jar a couple of times each day for the first week or two. You want to shake it more at the start while the sugar is activating the process. After that, give the jar a shake whenever you think of it. After a few months, the liqueur turns a deep ruby color. Strain out the fruit and save it. This is what you'll use to make your jelly. You can also use the fruit to make a delicious vinegar. There's more life in those berries than you know. After you have strained out the fruit, wash the jar, place the liquid back in and cap it. Allow it to sit for another week so the sediment settles to the bottom of the jar. Decant the liquid into a fresh bottle and you will have a beautiful clear liqueur. In Spain, a liqueur made of sloes by the same process is called pacharán. In Italy, the liqueur is called bargnolino. In Alsace, France, the sloes or prunelles are usually fermented into a strong alcohol or eau de vie. It is a much-used fruit here in Europe. My sloe gin is taking on the color of the berries. Here is one month in. It will be ready for the December holidays. I find that making preserves with the leftover fruit from your sloe gin infuses the jelly with an extra layer of flavor. You can certainly make confiture with fresh sloes. Just wait until the first frost to pick because I think this is when the berries are naturally at their "sweetest." (Nope. You still don't want to eat one off the branch.) The fruit will hang strong until November. I also gather together sloes I have used from leftover recipes and froze. You want roughly 2 kilos or 4 pounds of sloes to 600 ml or 1 pint of water to 2 kilos of sugar. For almost every confiture I make, I use the same amount of sugar to fruit. Every time. Wash the ripe fruit and cook with water for about 40 minutes. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally so as not to burn the fruit to the bottom of the pot. (I speak from experience here.) A pressure cooker makes it much faster on high for 5 minutes. Much like cooking cranberries, the sloes will start to "pop." When most of the berries are open, I take it off the stove to cool. Next, pour the liquid through a jelly bag and allow it to drip. You can leave it overnight but I'm always in a hurry to get the jelly pot simmering. Try to avoid squeezing the jelly bag as it can cloud the color. Add the sugar, perhaps a bit of lemon juice, to the berry juice and boil for 40-60 minutes. You're looking for the jelly to set on the spoon. I don't use any pectin for this recipe but if you prefer, allow the liquid and pectin to come to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. From there, you know what to do: Decant into sterilized jars and seal. Those sloes are not done yet. If you're looking for a beautiful ruby pink color, sloes make a wonderful natural dye or ink. You can use the fruit after preparing your cordial or jelly or plop fresh ones in a dye pot and go for a deeper, more colorfast result. Pick a kilo or two of sloes and place them into a large dye pot with 3 cups of water. I no longer freeze my sloes or wash them if I'm using them directly in a dye bath. We're not going for flavor and neither step is required for color.  Heat the fruit and water to a low boil and simmer for an hour or so. If you do not add any mordant or fixative chemicals to your sloe dye bath, you can use the same cookware as you do in your kitchen. If you add any treated material to the bath, then you must use your for-dye-purposes-only pots and utensils. Remove the sloes from the heat and cool. Pass the mixture through a sieve or jelly bag (it will be forever pink) to remove the fruit. If I am using fresh sloes, I will save the berries and use them again for a lighter-colored dye bath. If these berries have already been made into sloe gin, sloe jelly, and a dye bath, they are probably finished and ready for the compost heap. I find that without any additives, the dye works extremely well on cotton, silk, and paper. Those fibers take the color immediately. With wool, I would use a mordant of salt and/or alum (time to break out your equipment saved just for dye work) so that the color remains intense after washing. If you are looking for a light pink, just allow the wool fiber or yarn to sit in the bath for an hour or even overnight and then rinse well. I have to say that I don't usually use a mordant with sloes. I'm a very lazy dyer. The color holds very well for ink or watercolor. As a dye for wool, mordant the fiber with alum and/or salt to make the final product more colorfast. Silk or cotton needs no mordant for this dye bath.  When you work with natural dyes you connect with nature and become curious as to where you might find your next color. You can see that the wool yarn lost much of the color when rinsed. The cotton binding tape took the color well - just two minutes in the bath - and held the color after being washed. Since sloe jelly is a bit unusual, it makes a lovely gift to share with others. Tie a bit of vintage ribbon around the jar and Voilà. Blackthorn continues to give throughout the seasons. The bush is beautiful in early spring as the flowers bloom prior to the leaves. It makes the bees ecstatic. At the end of summer and well into fall, its versatile fruit provides libation, confiture, and beautiful color. Blackthorn's larger branches make excellent slow-burning firewood, providing heat and little smoke. The wood takes a fine polish and has long been used in France for tool handles and canes. I saw old, straight blackthorn branches made into beautiful walking sticks on my last visit to Ireland. In a pinch, the leaves make a fair substitute for tea. This is a "must-have" plant in my garden. Fortunately, Blackthorn is easy to propagate. The seeds or pits sprout in just about any soil medium and are ready to go out as small plants after the danger of frost has passed in spring. You can also pot up any new shoots that appear near the established bush. Three new plants are in my garden's hedgerow, mulched and ready for winter. But beware of those thorns. They'll catch you by surprise . . . but only once ;)   Forage this weekend for something unexpected. À bientôt mon amie, Karen 🇫🇷