Recipe: Cedar jelly

This jelly is surprisingly tasty and very West Coast.  Make sure you are picking your cedar tips from the tender tips as they are the youngest and most fragrant part of the branch.  As well, if you use the branch further down the stem, you will be steeping the bark in the water and as you might expect, get a far more woody flavour than you are probably going for.  While cedars have a nice aroma and are quite easy to find, if you are ambitious, keep an eye out for grand firs in the forest - they are often very tall, and have a grey blistered bark on them.  The blisters are pockets of fragrant grapefruit smelling sap - open one up to see.  The tips of these branches also have that grapefruit character and are a nice alternative to the cedar.

This recipe is intended to be used on a hot plate, thus the use of agar agar.  If you are using the jelly on a cold plate, you may prefer the softer texture of 100% gelatin and go with a ratio in the neighborhood of 6 sheets for every 2 cups of liquid.

You will need:

750ml / 3C                cedar tips
500ml / 2C                water
250ml / 1C                sugar
1                                lemon - juiced
10g / 0.4oz                agar agar
1 sheet                       gelatin

Method:

 - put the sugar and water together and bring to a simmer
 - turn off the heat and add the lemon juice and cedar tips
 - allow to cool (strain out the cedar tips early if you find the tea is strong enough)
 - strain the tea
 - whisk the agar into a small amount of the tea to incorporate
 - whisk in the rest of the tea
 - soak the gelatin, drain and set aside
 - bring the tea with the agar to a simmer
 - melt in the gelatin
 - pour into the vessel you want to set it in
 - cool completely
 - cut and use as desired