Mugolio, cedar cones, Mr Whippy and The Gherkin
Abundance 31: 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.
Today, the handful of Scots pines I was hopeful of carried both young male flowers and a few female flowers, but it was seemingly too early for cones. I wondered if I might have to get in the car and go further afield.
On the way back, a single coniferous tree. My phone app4 told me it was Himalayan cedar, or Deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara), the national tree of Pakistan. It is a most beautiful thing: Deodar means ‘wood of the Gods’, and it’s hard to argue.
The tips of few of the lower branches were just about graspable by the outstretched hand of a enthusiastic lank on tiptoes; the branches bent pleasingly to a little persuasion, and recoiled even more pleasingly when let go.
Oval cones dotted the upper surface of the branches along their length; a cluster of three then nothing for a metre, or semi-evenly spaced here and there, with no obvious reason as to why. I snapped them off wherever I found them; a punnet of pistachio-coloured cones, each shaped like The Gherkin and perfectly tessellated in soft diamonds that in time, I imagine, break into scales.
A little research tells me that these are male cones: Deodar cedars carry males on the lower branches of the tree, with the wind blowing their pollen to the female cones in the upper. In time, the grey/green cones grow from their current 2-3cm to perhaps four times that, turning brown and woody as they mature.
The colour and symmetry of these lovely boys, falling into the container lit up by the surprisingly warm sun, rescued another largely drizzly day and placed it very much in credit.
Mugolio
Scarcely a recipe, this delight is as simple as it gets. Just layer an equal weight of cones with sugar - I went for a mix of dark and light soft brown sugars - and leave well alone to ferment. As chance would have it, I picked exactly 300g of cones.
Use unripe cones in spring and early summer only. You shouldn’t need gloves for picking but as soon as you wash them the cones exude just enough resin to remind you of the last time you tried repairing a bicycle tyre.
Leave the jar somewhere in the light - ideally sunny - to ferment for 30 days. After 7-10 days, the cones release enough liquid to combine with the sugar as fermentation gets underway; pop the lid once a day after this to allow the carbon dioxide that’s created to escape. Shake the jar once in a while to encourage the sugar to dissolve.
While the pH and sugar creates an environment that ensures there’s little danger of harmful bacteria proliferating, it’s common to simmer the syrup, cones and all, to dissolve the sugar, improve the texture and enrich the flavour a little at the end of the fermentation. Strain, discarding the cones, and bottle.
Store in the fridge for maximum lifespan (indefinite) and go and buy some cheap vanilla ice cream.
courtesy of the excellent Colin at The Ground Up Cookery School, whoi gave me that bottle of two year old mugolio, above.
of all the coniferous trees, ensure you avoid the toxic yew.
the unimaginary one has developed a limp that seems to vanish every time someone starts cooking
Picture This, worth every penny of its £19.99 a year
I always think of potato when anyone says waffle rather than the battery Belgian variety. In fact the cravings from Birds Eye potato waffles is strong. Suppose it's because they're "waffley versatile."
Mark, I know you're always right and I know your recipes are always delicious - with the sukkah fudge being a case in point - I was wary but you persuaded me and yes it was DELICIOUS.
I know I breezily wrote that one could eat the Christmas tree as a very good way of disposing of it, but I wasn't ever sure I was ever going to practise what I preached. You're going to have to persuade me on this one.... pine and cedar flavours in food is a cultural step away from pine and cedar scents in other stuff.... reassure me!