The damson tree was drooping with fruit this year so there are bags stowed away in the freezer.  Turning them in to a liqueur doesn’t take long in preparation but months in maturing – with luck they’ll be ready for Christmas bottling.  It was a good weekend for other cooking: roasted vegetables with Chinese five spice and sesame oil, more of the Cox’s apple harvest dried in the dehydrator, a triumphant loaf with black olives, sun-dried tomatoes, rosemary and chorizo – the crust tested still warm was just delicious.

2 lb frozen damsons roughly chopped

8 oz sugar

1 oz whole almonds roughly chopped

2 litres gin

Dead simple: stir the sugar in to the gin to dissolve as much as possible, add the damsons and almonds, stir again and cover.  Stir as often as you can remember and, after a few months, strain through muslin or a coffee filter and bottle.  Still improves with keeping.

Penny Melville-Brown

Disability Dynamics ltd www.disabilitydynamics.co.uk

Helping disabled people to work since 2000