Sunday 16 August 2015

The crab apple jelly of Wild at Heart

There is a COOK shop now in the little town where I live. For those who are not from the UK, Cook is a shop specialized in ready meals, mostly frozen meals, but not only. It is fancy food, especially for frozen meals. It is also quite pricey, but from time to time it is nice to eat a fancy meal that you don't have to cook. As my wife and I both love their meals, we decided to pay them a visit and get a few things from there. I found among the things they sell that is not frozen and not made by their company this crab apple jelly from Wild at Heart. at £3.99, you can see it is quite a pricey product, especially for crabapple (I write crabapple in one word, not sure which is the correct spelling). In my parents' place, they have a crapabble tree that gives us plenty of fruits every two years, sometimes every year, and my brothers and I used to pick them up to make crabapple jelly. You can see the crabapple tree on this post and the crabapples in the making here. We have enough crabapples to make dozen of jars and more of jelly, and at a far cheaper price than these.

So I was reluctant to buy the jelly, but in the end I did it anyway. Because it is getting at that harvest time when I would usually pick up crabapples and because I wanted to enjoy them on toasts. I was also curious about the product and how it would compare to the home-made stuff I am so fond of. So I had some this morning with my breakfast. It is indeed quite nice. That said, it is not quite a nice as the crapabble jelly my family makes (I understand I am most likely biased). The Wild at Heart version is more like a jam than a jelly, truly: a lot of it is liquid and the solid part is rather soft, not as firm as what my parents make. At £3.99, it is rather expensive for a delight that a commoner could make just as well. But it was enjoyable to taste crabapple jelly on a toast all the same. And Wild at Heart gave me a brilliant inspiration: it says on the label and on their website that their jelly is ravishing with roasts, as an alternative to redcurrant jelly or cranberry sauce. And reading this it struck me: why did I never think about it before? So tonight we will have some on the side of our Sunday roast, which we also bought in COOK. And next time I am home, I will also accompany our Sunday roast with crabapple jelly.

1 comment:

jaz@octoberfarm said...

i have never made this. not sure why. i guess because i never had a crabapple tree. i wonder why it is named that?