Lynda Hallinan
A blessing heaven scent
Easter epiphanies aren’t necessarily holy. There’s the sudden, sickly realisation that it’s not possible to eat your body weight in chocolate, though many of us give it a fair suck of the sav.
There’s the disappointment of the hollow egg, or a hot cross bun with no mixed peel (and don’t get me started on the blasphemous chocolate chip version).
However, while you might believe in a greater being whose sacrificial son was resurrected on this day, my only religious experience this long weekend has been making jam. And not just any jam, but an emerald green spread inspired by the archangel Michael, who came to me in a chartreuse vision from cyberspace and said, ‘‘Google my name, you unholy heathen.’’
So I did. Who knew? Who knew that my flavour of the moment, my herbe du jour, was literally heaven scent?
Angelica archangelica was once known as the herb of the Holy Ghost. History has it that its medicinal qualities were first discovered by the botanical physicist Mattheus Sylvaticus in the early 1300s, who claimed the archangel Michael appeared in his dreams to reveal its miraculous plague-curing properties.
Angelica’s aromatic seeds and roots, once dried, were pounded or steeped in herbal concoctions to treat dysentery, cholera and gastric illnesses, while the hollow stems were candied by confectionery makers.
Unlike the glossy-leafed species Angelica parchycarpa, which has largely supplanted curly parsley as a ubiquitous cafe plate garnish, and yet which isn’t actually edible, true culinary angelica is often only encountered by modern philistines as those chewy green candied blobs in posh fruit cakes.
It must be an unfashionable flavour, for in 2011, The Telegraph writer Vicki Woods penned a column headlined, ‘‘Am I the last person on earth to use angelica?’’
Certainly, candied angelica is now next to impossible to buy from supermarkets or speciality food stores (Countdown’s online shopping website drew a blank, then unhelpfully suggested I buy Anusol haemorrhoid suppositories as a substitute).
Yet the plant itself, as described by bestselling author Amy Stewart, aka The Drunken Botanist, is a ‘‘big ol’ gorgeous creature in the carrot family’’. Angelica archangelica has large, dull green leaves, three to the bunch, and hollow fluted stems that reach 2m tall with umbrella-shaped heads of nectar-rich, lacy flowers that bees and beneficial insects adore. It looks like Italian parsley on steroids, or an overindulgent celery bush.
Stewart reckons angelica has an ‘‘indescribably fresh, bright, green flavour’’. It’s a flavour entirely of its own. Angelica is far less pungent than fennel, punchier than dill, not at all aniseedy like chervil, sweeter than coriander and grassier than a Marlborough sauvignon. Nothing else tastes remotely like it, except perhaps juniper berries, with which it is frequently paired to distil gin, Vermouth, bitters and Be´ne´dictine liqueurs.
If you sow your own angelica, you can harvest second-year stems for candying, but it’s a right faff, requiring boiling, blanching, peeling, steeping in sugar syrup, draining, drying and repeating for the better part of a week.
Who can be bothered? Not I, nor English herb gardening guru Jekka McVicar, whose 2010 cookbook’s nifty recipe for ‘‘gin on toast’’ jam has just four ingredients: angelica stems, caster sugar, water and a lemon.
The first time I made it, it didn’t set and ended up as as a drizzle sauce, so I’ve adapted Jekka’s recipe to use jamsetting rather than caster sugar; half the water; and lime rather than lemon for a sharper flavour. Harvest 1kg angelica stems. Remove the leaves and cut into 10cm lengths, to fit a large pot, and cover with boiling water. Simmer for 30 minutes, until tender. Drain, refill the pot with cold water and set aside to soak overnight.
The next day, drain, rinse, peel any tough stems and chop them up into bite-sized chunks. Return to the pot with 1 cup water, 500g jam-setting sugar and the juice and finely grated zest of a lime. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then boil hard for five minutes. Stir in another 500g measure of jam-setting sugar (it comes in 1kg bags), bring back to the boil and boil hard for five more minutes. Take off the heat, let it settle for a few minutes, then pour into jars and seal. Makes up to six small (250ml) jars.
Tip: When preparing the angelica, add a dash of baking soda to the water prior to boiling to keep their stalks vibrant green rather than the colour of faded army fatigues. And if that doesn’t work, a drop or two or green food colouring, stirred in just before the jam goes into jars, also does the trick.
Candied angelica is now next to impossible to buy from supermarkets or speciality food stores.