2026 Advent Calendar notes

 Corn mint, Mentha arvensis This is a very delicate member of the Labiaceae family; delicate in both its habit and its flavour.  It has small thin stems, light leaves and tiny pale mauve flowers in rings around its stem - it grows in little clusters, almost apologising for being there.  I think I have walked past a patch of this for years and never paid it any notice before.  I was diverted from the path by some beaver work (see photo below) and stumbled upon this little patch of corn mint.    In terms of flavour, there is a mint freshness, which borders on pineapple sweetness, and then an undertone of the good parts of Wood woundwort (Stachys sylvatica) aroma.  Wood woundwort is a foul smelling plant on the whole, but there is a ghost of an aroma floating around it that eludes you, and is overwhelmed by the main baser undertones of woundwort odour.  Well, corn mint has that ghost and turns it into something really beautiful. Its delicateness...

Cleavers, Galium apanine Another plant that goes by many names including goosegrass and sticky willie.  It is mainly considered a garden pest – able to smother other plants, cover your clothes with small furry beads and generally just get in the way.  However, it does have many uses – the young green plant is quite tasty – quite a lot like cucumber, and you can press the greenery to release a refreshing and health giving juice; you can also just soak a few sections of stem and leaves in a pitcher of water to freshen up the water – like people do with cucumber. It is the pesky sticky seeds though that hold an amazing secret; wait until they ripen and go brown, collect them up, roast them for 10 minutes or so in a reasonably hot oven, grind them up, and make a really ‘passable’ coffee with them.  I reckon, way back in the 16 th century when coffee first arrived in the UK, that grumpy old men in cafes tried the new fangled beverage begrudgingly, and muttered ‘not sure...

 Magnolia A couple of years ago I began to see lots of chat about Magnolia flowers and their edibility, and most specifically their ginger flavour.  I love ginger in chocolate, and in the early years of the business, I would make a fresh ginger ganache in winter.  However, as my repertoire of winter wild flavours widened, I no longer needed the ginger to fill the gap.  So the thought that we could be wild and have ginger got me very excited.   I had not noticed many magnolia trees in this area though - and I thought we were maybe too far north for the tree to survive; clearly I was just going around with my eyes shut!  I put a call out on Facebook and lovely gardeners with gorgeous trees invited me to come and pick flowers from their trees.  Now, of course, I see them alot - and many are magnificent, even up here. There is a ginger flavour to the petals, although not very strong, as well as lots of floral notes.  I have tried crystalising the...

Crab apple, Malus sylvestris We have a local expert on crab apples, Rick Worrall, who has spent many years researching them within Scotland.  He says that it is quite rare to find true crab apples – because there are so many Malus varieties around – in gardens and orchards – both sweet desert apples, and ornamental crab apples, they do a lot of cross breeding over the seasons – and so a true Malus Sylvestris is difficult to find. Indeed, every single crab apple tree that I know of in this area, produces very different versions of crab apples – small smooth granny smith green round apples, to slightly miniature cox like shapes and colours, a very pleasing round pink one, and a lovely red and yellow, Red delicious shaped apple that is really almost quite sweet. The classic use for these little feral fruits is to make use of their abundant pectin and combine them with other fruits and herbs to make jellies.  They are rarely eaten for their own sake.  However, once cooked...

Wild garlic ( Alium ursinum )  Wild gralic is one of the first fresh flavours to forage in the early spring; it greens up still-dormant woodland with its new and lush aromatic leaves. The scent builds up and intensifies over the weeks as the plants grow and then blossom with fabulous white pompom flowers held aloft over the thick carpets of vibrant green.  The Latin name  ursinum  means bear - and I imagine a northern hemisphere bear waking from hibernation, hungry and a little listless, and yearning for something to eat and just glorying in drifts of juicy, fresh, and vibrant wild garlic.  I feel much the same when I first see it's tender shoots.  After what seemed an endless winter one year, I was so energised by the sight and smell of this new growth that I had a go at making a ganache with the leaves, little expecting the results to be as extraordinary as they were; it sounds terrible - but is honestly, fantastic - a real adventure for your taste bu...

  Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria According to Tess Darwin's 'The Scots Herbal', the name meadowsweet is derived from its use to flavour mead rather than it's contribution to sweet smelling meadows; however, it is now more popularly recognised for the sweet heady scent that it contributes to meadows and hedgerows on warm summer afternoons. The fragrance is quite hard to pin down, and can veer on the side of unpleasant to some; however, when mixed with white chocolate it seems to have an aniseedy quality that is really delicious.  It has been used as a flavouring since Bronze Age or before, but also has an important medicinal history; it contains salicylic acid, an ingredient of aspirin, and has been used to treat malaria, fevers and headaches. Its Gaelic name is  Chuchulainn  and is derived from the story that the legendary warrier of that name was treated with meadowsweet baths to cure uncontrollable fits of rage or fever. We use it in ganaches when in season, ...