Mugolio, cedar cones, Mr Whippy and The Gherkin
Abundance: Tuesday 7 May 2024
The horse chestnuts are waving their wet Mr Whippy flowers in the sun. The wind flicks the first loosening petals over the wilting three cornered leeks beneath. A cheeky pup runs towards me then spins as if on elastic, back from where he came.
After 21 hours of drizzle, the hills lost to a sky of cotton wool, the sun is shooting hard and low across the bay. I have an hour now - maybe two - to find pine cones before the cold of evening takes over.
At the weekend, I tasted mugolio for the first time1. I knew of it, I had been encouraged to make some by my foraging friend Liz, but somehow it took until a couple of days ago for that small part of my culinary picture to be coloured in.
It is an extraordinary thing - a syrup derived from nothing more complicated than allowing pine, cedar, larch or spruce2 cones to ferment in an equal weight of sugar. Sweet, resinous and oddly spicy - imagine nutmeg, hazelnut and caramel crossed with a newly creosoted fence - I thought immediately of vanilla ice cream - the cheap, yellow kind of my childhood - of waffles (in which ordinarily I have little interest) and of whether it might make the best or worst of mojitos.
My wife and I walked an imaginary dog3 around the grounds of the now-defunct council offices. Part of the rich diversity of substantial trees that give this place the status of an arboretum town, these grounds have so much to explore. A grand mulberry brought me - tupperware in hand - a few summers ago, and every time I come back I find another reason to enjoy it here.
More words, plus a recipe for Mugolio below