Day 7: Scots pine catkins in plain chocolate




Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, is the National Tree of Scotland.  It is a native tree and the ancient Caledonian pinewoods once covered much of Scotland, so the tree has featured for a long time in Scots myth, history and daily lives. Scots pine is very strongly associated with Highland Perthshire, with the famous Black Wood of Rannoch just in the next valley north of here.  

It is a very resony tree - its Gaelic name is giubhas or juicy tree - and so was really important as a source of light during winter - long thin resinous sticks being used as 'candles'. I have been making a chocolates with the young spring shoots for many years, and one of these will appear later in the advent, but this particular chocolate is made with the young, unripe male catkins.

In the spring, the trees are busy - focussing on both growth and seed production.  The branch ends sprout a number of young shoots, some are plain, some have male catkins and some have small purple female flowers.  At the base of these new shoots there are small green cones from the previous year (and these can be picked for making pine syrup),  and below them the larger mature cones from the previous year to that.  It takes 2 years for the seeds to mature, which is a longterm investment for the tree.

The catkin buds are delicious - when young and not yet opened up they are fresh and crunchy with a lovely bright citrussy pine flavour.  They take some time to shuck off the stem, and pick out as much of the brown papery covering as possible, but once done, we soak in sugar syrup, leave for a few days, drain off the flavoured syrup (which is delicious), and dehydrate the small crystalised nubbins.  Despite picking as many as we can each year, after we have shucked them, and crystalised them, there never seems to be enough to make as many bars as we know we can sell.  Hey ho.

We have used many chocolates to match these in the past, and with the nature of craft chocolate we cannot always get the same origins each year from makers.  This year it fell on NearyNogs Ecuador 70% to deliciously fulfill the task of carrying these piney-honeycomby nuggets in the bars, and it does it very well.

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