Flowering Quince Jam

Flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica) fruit

Remember when I talked about quinces?

Yep, those tiny little bright-gold fruit that I’d picked on some ornamental bushes in my neighborhood – well, the other weekend, I picked some more of them off another bush, and then I was faced with a reality of – I still hadn’t bought vodka or rum needed to infuse alcohol with these, and I have bought a bag of sugar.  And I have jars.  And the amount of quinces in the bag in the fridge had grown quite respectable.  Eh, I thought, jam it is!

Well, let me put it this way – the tiny fruit do put up a bloody fight!  I quartered, and I scraped seeds, and I chopped and chopped and chopped until, what feels like hours later, the chopping was done.  Whew!

… and quartered, and cored, and chopped…

Right, I’d only preserved large quinces till now and really did not think about how much work these were, and for a short few moments I wondered if it will all be worth it… until the water and sugar and quinces warmed up in the pan, and the scent hit me.  Oh, oh, oh yes!  It’s worth it!

And then came the boiling and the stirring, and the color slowly deepening to a gorgeous rose-orange, and the scent permeating the entire house – oh, definitely worth the effort of this morning!

and ready, and the lid-vacuum has been achieved!

My recipe for quince jam is my own, which I have based very loosely on a traditional Greek quince jam, but with a few tweaks that make me happier about the result.  I’d never made it with japanese flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica) fruit before, but the only difference was that the fruit softened faster, creating a mushier, and to me, even more attractive jam.  There is also a scent difference between Chaenomeles and Cydonia fruit, but it is not a qualitative one – or at least not insofar that one is better than the other.  They differe slightly, and in my opinion, this one is no worse.  It is somewhat like a difference between strawberries and raspberries – each have their adherents, and most (like myself) love both.  Which is to say, if you have got a bush of flowering quince and always wondered whether there was use for the fruit – there is.  And this is it.  And you should make it, lick the spoon like a maniac, jar it, and devour it gluttonously give it away as presents.  Unless you are ok with eating loads of jam yourself – in which case, devour away!

Quinces are naturally high in pectin, which means that the jam thickens without adding any – though this specific recipe produces a softly thickened jam, rather than a set knife-sliceable marmalade, and I prefer it that way.  I do have a recipe for another type of preserves made out of Cydonia fruit, which turns ruby-red and sets hard enough to cut into slices.  But that’s not what this is all about.

What you need (makes 1L of jam):

• Jars of your choice to put it in.
• Large, tall pot in which to process them post-sealing.

• 800g of quince fruit (whole), which, once washed, cored, chopped, soaked in water and drained, translates to ~600g of quince fruit (prepared)
• 400g sugar
• 1 lemon (zested, and juice squeezed out)
• 4-6 whole cloves
• 1 tablespoon rosewater (optional, but it makes the jam utterly lush – if you have some on hand and don’t hate the scent of roses, definitely use it!)

How to do it:

• Put your jars into an oven set to 75°C and leave them in there for the duration.
• Pour half the lemon juice into a large mixing bowl and then half-fill the bowl with cold water.
• Wash, quarter, core and chop quinces into small slices.  Quince fruit tends to oxidize when cut, so drop each handful of chopped quince into the water with added lemon juice as you work.
• When all the fruit is prepared, drain the quinces in a colander and weigh them.  If you have 600g, great.  If not, no huge problem, simply calculate the amount of sugar you’ll need from a 2:3 proportion of sugar:quinces.  Unless the amount is double or more, no need to increase the lemon, but you can increase the cloves and rosewater proportionally.
• Dump the quinces into a clean, non-reactive (stainless steel) cookpot, add just enough water to nearly come to the top of the quinces, and bring to a boil.
• Cook for about 5-10 minutes until quinces are soft.  This will depend on your variety of quinces – Cydonia (true quince) took longer than this, if I remember correctly.
• Add the sugar, cloves, lemon zest, and half the remaining lemon juice.  Reduce heat to medium and cook the jam, stirring with a wooden from time to time to prevent sticking, until the fruit has broken down and the liquid has reduced to desired level.
• Add the remaining lemon juice and the rosewater, stir well and boil 15 more minutes.
• Turn the heat off or take the pot off the burner and allow to stand 15-30 minutes.
• Ladle into hot jars and seal.
• Boil water in a large, tall cookpot and lower the sealed jars into it when the water is hot but not yet boiling.  Bring to a boil and heat-process for 5-10 minutes.
• Remove jars from pot using jar tongs, or a spatula and an oven mitt.  Place jars on a wooden board to cool.
• After 12-24 hours (once the jars are entirely cool to touch), gently test the seals by pressing down on screw-caps to see if vacuum has been achieved, or by unlocking the wire lock and seeing if the lid remains shut.  You want to achieve vacuum post-cooling so that the food is sealed in the jar and microorganisms aren’t getting in.
• IF the vacuum has NOT been achieved (the screw-cap has not gotten sucked in and makes a pop noise when pressed, or the glass jar lid pops open the moment you release the clasp), stick the jar(s) in the fridge immediately and eat within a week.  Don’t keep it at room temperature any longer to avoid bacterial growth and all sorts of unpleasantness.
• If the vacuum has been achieved, store in a cool dry place away from direct sunlight.  I imagine this will keep for a year, but it’s never lasted that long in my house.

This works great on toast, on some buttered scones, or over vanilla ice cream.  …Oops, didn’t I tell you to give it away?  Too late now!

The Lost Gold of Autumn – Quince Fruit

One of the things I love most about autumn is that autumn is when all quince fruit, be it true quinces (Cydonia), or Japanese and Chinese flowering quinces, come into season.

Fruit of the Japanese flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica)

The first thing you notice about the quinces – from afar – is their gorgeous deep golden yellow color, shared across the three genera to which the plants belong, but it is not the color that is their main characteristic – it’s the scent.  If you have never smelled a quince, you are really missing out.  It is really like nothing else – deep and honey-sweet with a strong citrus or pineapple note and a rather exotic spiciness all in one.  The best way I’ve been able to adoringly describe it myself, is that it smells of pineapple and heaven.  I would go as far as to say it is the best of fruit scents, with passionfruit (which I also love) being the runner-up in this contest.

I think the reason that quinces are not better known is that they aren’t eat-raw kind of fruit.  They are hard like a wooden board, and taste tart and tannic and very astringent if you do manage to bite into one raw (watch the teeth!).  As such, and as fruit in the conventional, ‘fruit bowl’ sort of understanding, they are very disappointing – and it is in preparations where they are heat or otherwise treated, that they truly shine.

There are more famous uses for quinces than the ones I favor – one notable such being the Spanish quince spread membrillo, usually suggested as pairing for manchego cheese.  If you manage to get your hands on this, by all means, do try it.  It’s wonderful.  Another amazing use for them is stewing them with meats in Central-Asian style plov-type meat-and-rice dishes, or even in simple stews.  They hold their shape very well and tend to perfume the entire kitchen, not just the cooking pot, with their fragrance.

But, what I like to do with quinces at home is one of three things – one being leaving them in a bowl to decorate my home and scent it, but that’s neither here nor food.

My all-time favorite thing to do with quinces is plunk them into good-quality white or golden rum or into plain vodka for a few months along with a couple of cloves and a bit of sugar, to impart their gorgeous fragrance on the alcohol.  Quince-infused rum is a specialty of mine that all friends, even those who dislike rum as a rule, love.  After a few months, even white rum takes on a beautiful delicately gold color, and the scent, carried by the alcohol, is truly out of this world.  If you do want to try this, there are general, but very detailed instructions on how to do that here.

The other favorite quince product for me is Glyko Kythoni – a Greek preserve of quinces, often made with a touch of lemon juice or peel and rosewater.  When cooked in sugar, quince flesh slowly goes from being a pale cream to a remarkable rosey orange shading to a deep red (depends on the quince harvest and cultivar I suspect), and all the fragrance is preserved.  I will most certainly write about the preserves as soon as I’ve gotten my greedy paws on some fresh quinces of this kind and made them, so that’s for the future.

I use the word “quince” interchangeably, but as there are a few species – and indeed, genera – of quinces, the differences are as follows.

The true quince, Cydonia, is a large fruit resembling a lumpy cross between apple and pear in a bright yellow-gold color.  It is the fruit of my choice when making quince preserves – mainly because it is larger and easier to handle when peeling and coring – but also because its scent is sweeter, and to me, more appropriate to the use.  This variety is a warm-climate fruit, and though I’ve seen them growing well enough in the United Kingdom, I suspect that the best ones still do come from further South.  It is certainly not hardy enough to grow in Sweden.  Hence, market as source.

The family of flowering quinces (named so not because other quinces don’t have flowers, but because of their remarkable red flowers for which they are most often cultivated), Chaenomeles, has smaller fruit and are quite hardy enough even for Sweden.  In fact, the bowl of the ones on my table has been harvested from some bushes growing near where I live.  The fruit are (obviously) much smaller, and the scent is more astringent and spicy rather than pineappley and sweet.  I have not tried using these before (I’d always buy the larger variety), but the scent is remarkable, and in my thoughts, will go amazingly well infusing in alcohol, and that’s the impending fate of the fruit in the above photo.  So, that’s now in the planning – just need to buy some alcohol and more containers to infuse it in, and then I am good to go!

And once again, in all their golden beauty!

In short, if you’ve never noticed the existence of quinces – of any variety – it is my not-at-all-humble opinion is that you should.  You may or may not love them as much as I do, but one thing is for sure – you really have no idea what they are like until you’ve tried.  And it’s very much worth it.

Updated:  The quinces pictured actually ended up in a totally gorgeous, tangy, flavorsome marmalade-like set jam (recipe here).  And there was much, much rejoycing!

Saturday Walk

Today the morning has dawned almost ridiculously sunny, with a few fluffy clouds here and there, and an early-autumn chill in the air that is very much encouraging for taking a long walk in town.

So, today we will be visiting the Stockholm Haymarket (Hötorget), and possibly Essencefabriken, the old spice shop in the area.

Image courtesy http://blogg.passagen.se

The historic haymarket is now an interesting place for buying unusual food ingredients, and consists of the open-air market as well as a market hall.   There are also a few specialty food shops in the vicinity, such as my favorite oriental supermarkets.  In the hall itself there are spice merchants, a South-American butcher, and cheese shops – and the open-air market tends to have just about anything you can ask for provided it is in season (and some things which are not).  I’m hoping to find a few quinces, since I am planning to make quince preserves for the winter, and see what else is interesting and available.

I promise to take pictures.

Infused Alcohol – For Whatever You Celebrate

It is early autumn, the days are getting ever so slightly chillier, and the light tends to fall a little aslant. I can feel the change of season in the air, and to me in terms of my kitchen, it means two things: I want to bake (an urge that I tend to resist except when have guests), and I know it is time to make infused alcohol if it should be ready by midwinter, whatever your flavour of celebration may be that season.

My relationship with alcohol can best be described as a loving long-distance relationship of sorts.  I love it, love drinking the really good stuff, and I also get intoxicated from the tiniest amounts, so I drink it rarely and in small quantities.  In the words of my friends, I am the most lightweight drinker any of them have ever met.  On the up side, that also means I am sober within an hour or two of drinking, so (if it is an occasion on which I would actually drink at all), I can get tipsy again and again repeatedly.

I think alcohol is a good thing in the quantity I consume it, but in a very non-hypocritical way, I can also honestly say I drink about half a bottle of wine and a couple of shots of hard liquor (typically brandy in my coffee) per month.  I imagine people can be just fine drinking more than I (and also stay on their feet better than I’d manage), but I am not here to lecture anyone on how much they should drink.  If you are drinking too much, you probably know it anyway, and I strongly believe in the fact that the only person whom you can change in this life, is your very own self.

But, I digress, as I was going to talk about infusion, and not about sobriety (or lack thereof).  So, it is usually for the winter festivities, that I prepare a variety of those (to be drunk chilled, or used in sweet-making and desserts, or whichever way you like it).

Infusing alcohol is easy.  What you need is:

• A glass preserving jar, 1-1.5L in volume, one of those with a metal lever lock and food-grade rubber seal.
• A 750ml bottle of alcohol you wish to infuse (plain vodka, gin, and white rum are the typical favourites).
• Whatever you plan to infuse the alcohol with (fruit, herbs, whole spices, etc.)
• Sugar (if using, not all recipes call for it)
• Boiling water on two separate occasions (to sterilize the jar and muslin)
• Muslin cloth and a funnel.
• A friend you can trust.
• Refrigerator, and a whole lot of patience

The basic instruction is:

1. Wash and dry your fruit (if using to infuse).  If you plan to use it later and freeze it in advance, wash and dry it before freezing.
2. Free up a spot in the corner of your fridge that you can easily reach on a daily basis that the jar would fit into.
3. Wash the jar and rinse thoroughly (this is primarily for you strange British people who don’t rinse the washing up liquid off your clean dishes… RINSE IT OFF, else the result will taste of soap!).
4. Sterilize the jar by pouring a bit of boiling water in it (use a dish towel to hold it), and swirling it about, then pouring out.
5. Place infusion materials into jar as per recipe (berries, fruit, spices and sugar).
6. Pour the entire bottle of alcohol on top.  Reclose the empty bottle, do not wash it, and keep it for later refilling.
7. Seal jar.
8. Swirl gently and place into the prepared spot in fridge.

Now, here is where the patience becomes imperative.  The use of the refrigerator is twofold:  One, it keeps the alcohol cold, which means it is less likely to evaporate.  Two, if you are like most people, you open your fridge at least once a day.  What you must do for the next 2-3 months, is take the jar out once a day, admire it, pet it, swirl it a bit gently, admire some more, DO NOT OPEN IT, and place it back in the fridge.  Not opening is important to both, prevent contamination of alcohol with water condensation on inside of cold jar, and to resist temptation to stick fingers in and try it.  It won’t be ready for at least 8 weeks.

Once 2-3 months have passed, or when you just can’t wait any longer (but you must remember that if you open too soon, it won’t be as nice!), take out your trusted friend, muslin cloth, funnel, empty bottle, and the much-anticipated jar.

1. Drape the muslin cloth over the funnel (letting it drop into it obviously), and pour some boiling water over it over the sink.
2. Open the empty bottle and place the funnel into it.  It will cool quickly, and we also want that.
3. Let the trusted friend hold the funnel and bottle so that it does not tip over and ruin all that hard work.
4. Carefully filter the alcohol through the funnel back into its waiting bottle, and close.
5. The fruit in the funnel (depending on which ones you’ve used) can make fantastic boozy cake topping (if they were strawberries or elderberries or blueberries for example!), or tossed out.  Or, if they are spices, they can be wrapped in said muslin and hung up as air freshner (like a pomander without an orange) for a while.

I tend to keep the resulting infusion in the fridge, but I think it can quite easily be stored outside of it once filtered.  Not that it is very likely to survive long enough for storage to become too much of a problem, anyway… :)

A couple of my favourite ideas for infusion materials (but feel free to come up with your own, experimenting is fun, and you know what you like better than anyone else does):

• Quince Rum:  white rum, 1 large quince fruit (sliced), 2-4 whole cloves, 2 tablespoons demerara cane sugar.
• Yule Vodka:  plain vodka (I like Absolut, but that’s my I-love-Sweden habit speaking, and any decent vodka will do), 1 cup blueberries (you want the true wild ones, aka bilberries), fresh or frozen, 1 stick cinnamon (for the love of little green apples and the booze you are making, make sure it’s real Ceylon cinnamon!), 2-4 whole cloves, 1-2 allspice grains, 1-2 tablespoons of white sugar.
• Elderberry vodka:  plain vodka as per above, 1-2 cups of ripe elderberries (de-stemmed), 2 heaping tablespoons white sugar, 1 curl of lemon or orange peel (make sure to wash the citrus with soap and water to remove shellac resin which is used to spray citrus, unless you manage to buy unwaxed citrus).

Enjoy!