Robin's Bounty

Robin sent me these knobbly chaps recently

The true quince, Cydonia oblonga, (as opposed to Chaenomeles japonica the ornamental or japanese quince) is something of a rarity in English gardens, so can usually only be obtained if you have, or know someone who has, a quince tree. Ornamental quinces are often seen in gardens and indeed do produce a quince like fruit in the autumn, but in my experience this is nothing like the fruit of the proper quince. They look a bit similar, in that they are both hard and completely inedible raw, but the true quince, when cooked has the ability to be transformed  into a fragrant amber puree, quite unlike anything else. Incidentally it's said that the "apple" of the Garden of Eden was in fact a quince, though it speaks volumes for Eve's powers of temptation that she could lure anyone with such a sour knobbly thing as a raw quince! Maybe it wasn't really the fruit he was after....

Anyway, Robin was kind enough to send me quite a lot of quinces, so I've been playing about with various recipes and ideas for using them. They are famously partnered with apples, and bring a special fragrance to a traditional apple pie which lifts it quite out of the ordinary. But it has to be said that the flavour is fairly intense, and even if you like it, as I do, it can get a bit overpowering after several days of experimental simmering and stirring. So I intend to set aside my creations for a day or two and then come back and see what works best. So far I've made Quince and Apple Jelly, Quince and Cranberry Preserve, Quince Cheese, or Membrillo, and Quince Mincemeat.

Quinces are hard and curiously downy, so first of all you need to wash off the downy covering, then chop them roughly and either boil them until soft and strain through a jelly bag, or steam them in your Mehu Maija hot juice extractor machine if you have one. 

 You will end up with a quantity of clear juice for making jelly, which should be sparkling clear

and quite a lot of pulp that can be seived and boiled with sugar to make quince cheese, which the Spanish dry and eat with cheese, apparently. I've never tried it so I will see how it turns out.

I found I had rather a lot of quince cheese, so I tried mixing it with some of my home made mincemeat, and it's quite delicious. It adds a rich flavour and moistness to the mincemeat which I really like. And finally from an idea I saw on Marisa's blog I cooked up some of it with cranberries to make a Cranberry and Quince preserve. I quite enjoy a dollop of Cranberry sauce with a cold turkey sandwich, but the addition of the quince lifts it out of the everyday and into the seasonal luxury, and even though it's a lot of trouble to go to, as they say on the adverts,
You're Worth It

New Toy

I've treated myself to one of these..

and no it's not some weird victorian medical contraption, it's a steam juice extractor. I bought it very cheaply on Ebay from a lady whose dad used to use it for wine making. I've got such a generous harvest of fruit this year, I thought it would be a useful bit of kit.

There's basically a pan at the bottom which you fill with water, then a second pan on top that collects the juice with a funnel in the middle that directs the steam up to the fruit which sits in the top layer in a basket. It's difficult to describe, you kind of have to see it to get how it works.

So far I've used it to juice a bucketful of gooseberries, from which I made an elderflower jelly which is as clear as a bell,

 and the remaining pulp I used for a batch of summer chutney.

It takes up quite a bit of room and will go in the garage in the winter, so no good for anyone pressed for space but so far I'm quite pleased with the results. Cheese and chutney sandwich anyone?

Oranges and Lemons

One of the most annoying things about supermarkets is they way they have robbed us of our sense of seasonality. The tired old pile of courgettes sits there month in month out, the price hardly changing to reflect their journey from the other side of the world this month, and there, just the same in September when they are in season here and should be almost free. Same for strawberries.  Don't get me wrong, I love the convenience of supermarkets as much as the next shopper, but there's a price to be  paid, sometimes I think it's more than I want to  pay. Anyway, that concludes this weeks Reith lecture on Seasonality.
I was actually thinking about oranges and how when I was small they used to be considered in season in winter, which I suppose makes sense really considering they are of course imported from hot places. But then they were quite a luxury, and not the bogof  bags of cheap satsumas of today. My dad served in the Palestine Police during the British Protectorate in 1946, and I can still remember him showing us children the amazing photos of him standing next to a mountain of oranges that was bigger than he was! We could hardly believe it. Tangerines were still special enough to get one in your Christmas stocking in the fifties.

So anyway, apart from marmalade, there's lots of other lovely citrussy recipes well worth making at home. As it's still too early in the year for any home grown fruit, citrussy things like Lemon Curd, and puddings like Sussex Pond pudding are definately worth having a bash at, mostly because you can't buy them. Or at least you can't buy anything like the quality that you can make. Proper lemon curd is the most delicious and wholesome thing if you make it yourself, being mostly fresh eggs, butter, and lemons - (ok and a bit of sugar) but nothing like the commercial stuff. And Sussex Pond pudding, being a suet pudding, is completely unobtainable unless you make it yourself. I think the reason suet puddings have gone out of fashion is not that they are too fattening, (no worse than any other pudding really) but they don't lend themselves to freezing, chilling, canning or any other method of preservation, and so are never seen. If you want one, you have to make it, and you have to make it on the day you want to eat it. So I'll try to make one tomorrow and post the photos.

But for today, Lemon Curd

2 oz/50g butter
2 eggs and 2 egg yolks
2 lemons
6 oz 150g caster sugar

Zest the lemons with your fine blade microplane grater (they're expensive but brilliant).

Squeeze the juice and put into a saucepan with the zest, and all other ingredients.

Stir over a gentle heat until the sugar dissolves. Continue stirring over the lowest heat until thickened. Don't overheat, or you'll get lemon scrambled eggs, which is not great. Use a double boiler if you're nervous.

Pot into small sterilized jars and cover.

Store in the fridge for up to three weeks.

Having said that, when I made this I used the handy/lazy Aga method, which involves virtually no stirring at all. You just put the sugar, butter and lemon in a pyrex jug or a  preserving jar, and leave it in the simmering oven for an hour to dissolve.

Then you take it out, add the eggs and beat for a minute,

and put it back in the simmering oven for another hour by which time it will have thickened and set, all by itself. Magic.

Uses - makes simple things special -

Lemon curd tarts - use a rich shortcrust pastry or any trimmings you have leftover when making anything pastry based. You'll never throw pastry offcuts away again! Bake in a moderate oven, like shortbread,  ie don't overbrown the pastry or boil the curd.

Cake filling - All in one sponge cake, filled with lemon curd and whipped cream, or mascarpone.

Delicious for tea, just spread on a doorstep of home made buttered bread.

It's Marmalade Time Again!

The sour oranges from Seville are the best for making marmalade, that wonderful staple of the English breakfast table. They are only in season for a short time though, around January. I noticed this year that Waitrose are stocking organic seville oranges at £2.20 a kilo, which is only slightly more than the ordinary kind which I have seen in Tesco's at £2.00 kg. As I understand citrus fruit is quite heavily sprayed, it seems like a bargain, so stock up now while you have the opportunity, and you can have a whole year's supply of marmalade in the larder. If you don't have the time to make it straight away, and it's not the kind of thing you can just dash off in a spare ten minutes,the fruit keeps well in the freezer, just put whole fruit in plastic bags and freeze to use at a later time.

There are as many recipes for marmalade as I've had hot dinners, (and that's quite a few) but over the years I've found this is the easiest, and most reliable. It's particularly useful for Aga owners, in that you can leave the fruit to cook in the bottom oven overnight, but it's easily adapted to ordinary cookers.

I generally make two styles of marmalade, as I find that consumers fall into two distinct camps. The ones who like fine shreds in a light orange fruity marmalade, generally women,  and those who like big chunks in an altogether darker preserve, usually men. So I call them Ladies Breakfast Marmalade, and Gentleman's Oxford Style Marmalade respectively. However, I'm not sexist about it and you can actually eat whichever you like, with no sinister hormonal effects.

Ladies Breakfast Marmalade
should yield around 10lbs
3 lbs/1.5kg seville oranges (or any mixture of other citrus if you prefer)
2 lemons
6lbs/3kg granulated sugar
4 pints/2.5litres water

Place the whole fruits in the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer very gently until soft. This can be acheived in the slow oven of the Aga overnight (be sure to put a plate on top of the fruit to avoid unsightly browing), or on the hob on a very slow simmer for a couple of hours or so, until the skins are very soft.  Leave until cool enough to handle, then halve the fruit and scoop the insides out with a soup spoon back into the saucepan, and set the peels aside. Place the saucepan back on the heat to simmer gently while you deal with the peel.

Cut each half in half again, and then taking several skins together slice the peel as thinly as you can. It should be quite soft and easy to cut.

When you have finished all the peel, remove the saucepan from the heat and pour the contents through a sieve, into a roomy preserving pan, pressing the pulp with a wooden spoon. Discard the contents of the sieve, and add the sliced peel, and the sugar to the pan and return to the heat. Stir over gentle heat until all the sugar is dissolved and you can feel no grittiness with your spoon.

Now you can turn up the heat and boil the marmalade to setting point. You can discern this by use of a jam thermometer, which will register around 220F/105C, or by the old fashioned cold plate method.

Place a small plate in the freezer for a few minutes, and when you are ready to test, drop a small spoonfull onto the plate. If, after a minute or two you can push the marmalade with your finger and it forms a wrinkly skin, then it's ready. It's difficult to be exact, but it  shouldn't really take much more than ten or fifteen minutes, sometimes less.

Turn off the heat and stir in a knob of butter, which helps disperse scum. You will need to allow the marmalade to cool a little before potting, so that all the peel doesn't rise to the tops of the jars. Ten minutes or so should do it. Make sure your jars are clean and sterile by putting them in the oven for ten minutes or on a hot dishwasher cycle. Cover straight away with cellophane covers, or even better, screw tops.

Gentleman's Oxford Style Marmalade

Make exactly as above but slice the peel in chunkier bits, and when adding the sugar include  two good tablespoons of black treacle, or blackstrap molasses.

Don'f forget the pretty labels.

Hips and Haws

The hedgerows are full of rose hips and hawthorn berries, and it seems a shame to leave them all to the birds. So I have tried an old recipe using haws, the fruit of the hawthorn. You can call them hawthorn berries, but it seems a shame not to use the old name, especially when it appeals so much to people like me with a very juvenile sense of humour. Indeed, I suspect my own motives for making this lovely old preserve, now who do I know who might like a bottle of Haw Sauce, hmm, the vicar perhaps..?

Haw Sauce

Ingredients

1 lb of Haws

8 oz sugar

half a pint of cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

half a teaspoon pepper

half a fresh chilli

There's no shortage of haws, so make sure you choose good ones, nice and plump, avoid the ones hanging around by the roadside, and nothing unnattractive and wrinkly.

Pick off all the stems and bits of leaf. Wash and place in a saucepan with half a pint of cider vinegar and half a pint of water, and half a chopped chilli.

Simmer until soft - mine took only 10 minutes.

Next you have to get the stones out, and the easiest way is to whizz the whole lot in the food processor for a few seconds and then pass it through a sieve.

Yes I know it sounds like a bit of a pain, especially for a small quantity like this, but as this was in the way of an experiment, I would certainly make a larger amount next time, which would be more worthwhile. And after all, it's mostly free!

Return the pulp to the saucepan, add the sugar, salt, and pepper and stir until dissolved. You should have a thick sauce, if it seems a bit runny boil it down for a few minutes

Pour into sterilized bottles

and spend ages making tricksy little labels...

And if you think  you don't have time to be messing about with all this, remember it's fun, it's delicious, it's almost free, and it's the perfect Christmas present for the single bloke who has everything!
















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