Recipes for May 

Pork Chop with Apple, Orange and Ginger Sauce.

Cooking Time:Approximately 5 minutes
The flavours are great and the preparation time for once
is less than the eating time. Enjoy! 

Ingredients (to Serve 4)
4 Pork chops or steaks grilled
Grated rind of 1 orange
Juice of 2 oranges
4x15ml prepared apple purée
1x15ml clear honey
3x15ml gineger wine (optional)
1.25(½") root ginger, peeled and grated

Method
Place all ingredients (except meat) into a saucepan.
Bring to the boil and simmer uncovered, until the sauce thickens slightly.
Serve poured over grilled pork chops or steaks

Elderflower Cordial or Sirop de Sureau

There are thousands of elderflower (“sureau”) bushes around this area and the season has just started. I’ve seen lots of them by the Gardon. This is a wonderful drink for a hot summer’s day, so all you need now is some scissors, a plastic bag and you are ready to raid the country side!!!

Makes about 1.5 litres (2 1/2 pints)

25 heads of “ripe” elderflower heads (the bigger the better)
1.8kg (4lb) sugar
1.2 litres (2 pints) water
75g (2 1/2oz) citric acid (from the chemist)
2 lemons

Method
Heat the water slowly to a boil, add the sugar and dissolve.... take off the heat and then dissolve the citric acid in. Put the flowers in a bowl, adding the lemon zest and the sliced lemons and pour over the sugar syrup.

Cover and keep for 24 hrs (I've kept it for up to 3 days before and found that this is even better) and then strain the whole lot through muslin (or a clean tea towel).

Pour into clean plastic bottles and then keep in the fridge for immediate use or pop into the freezer to keep for the summer.

Can be used in fruit salads or poured neat over ice cream... or just dilute with water (or fizzy water) and a couple of ice cubes.

Note: You can buy citric acid at the chemist. Most of them don’t store it but they can order it. You only need it if you want to keep the cordial for a long time, but I find it doesn’t even make it to the end of the summer as we tend to drink it very quickly! However, due to the high content of sugar, you can store it in the freezer and it won’t solidify so I suppose you can do without the acid.