There are many ponderings I ponder on a daily basis and one of them is if raspberry cordial is more valuable than melted gold. When you are confronted by the almost vulgar price of 9 dollars a punnet (of 200 lousy grams of half-hearted berries) in Oz, it is easy to see that raspberries might just be berry gold. And I would like to claim that it is, for more reasons than I can really fit in this blog. Let’s start with the name in Swedish….. Hallon. It is a kind of breezy, laissez-faire kind of name that just sits so right on the tongue. Let’s taste it again, Hallon. This delicious berry with such a delicious name also looks so delicious. Plump little red cushions that all hang together in a perfectly perfect shape of berry plumpness. A delight to the eye as well as the tummy. Then I just love the fact that it grows like weed and people just can’t give it away for love and money when the season is right. I remember my mother stalking the neighbourhood to please release her of a kilo or five, only to be met by slammed doors in her berry face, as they probably had just managed to shift their own surplus raspberry stash somewhere else. It is the berry of abundance.
And this is what brings me to the comparison with liquid gold, in two words, raspberry cordial. The cordial sans competition. The nirvana of cordials, the Holy Grail of berry juices, the complete cordial experience. I reckon you haven’t lived if you haven’t drunk some homemade Swedish raspberry cordial. And the key to this love jus is captured in those three words; raspberry, Swedish and homemade. The homemade bit goes like this, passed on down through generations, at least two. Doesn’t sound that impressive but there you go.
Mamma Ingers Raspberry Cordial
Makes 8 litres
5 litres of berries (fresh the best but you could use frozen as well)
3 litres of water
4 kilos of sugar
35 grams citric acid
Powder the citric acid over the berries in a big bowl.
Boil water and sugar.
Pour water and sugar over the berries in the bowl.
Let it rest for 24 hours.
Siv the mix and pour straight into bottles. Keep cool in the fridge.
The cordial can be frozen, just don’t fill the bottle to the top, keep upright.
Make plenty of it, so for the rest of the year, you can dig out the liquid gold from your stockpile, relive the summer hallon feast of flavours and savour those little moments of glory that just makes life worth living. But please, don’t take my word for it, go hunt, gather and make for yourself and you will thank me for it for the rest of your lives.
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