Fruits

That was quince enough

| Green Card Gardener

Other than eating them, I don’t want to have anything to do with quinces for a very long time. Last week I spent three long evenings, and a good part of Saturday, peeling, coring, and chopping quinces, making quince jelly, quince sauce, quince compote, quince chutney, and poached quinces. In the process, I ran out of sugar, apple cider vinegar, jars, and lids. I dulled two paring knives (quinces are very acidic!), got a blister on my hand, and had to run over to a friend’s house because I don’t have a pressure cooker and I thought the quince sauce needed special processing (now I know better). Also, two filled canning jars cracked during sealing, spilling their precious content into the boiling water.

Yet when I look at the line-up of jars, I am telling myself it was worth it. I had already given up on getting my hand on quinces this fall when our neighbor unloaded three large crates with quinces on our porch on Wednesday night. I did not weigh them but it must have been 30 to 40 pounds.

If those had been regular quinces, I would not have been able to handle such a huge amount. The trees where that glut of gnarly quinces originated surely have not been treated with pesticides, nor been pruned in decades so there was a lot of waste. Except for the tedious process of cleaning and trimming, this was fine with me; I was going to peel and thoroughly core the quinces anyway, because I don’t like the astringent taste of those parts.

While the look of most fruits deteriorates during cooking, the quince turns into a blushing pink beauty. I find it amazing how the pale yellow, gritty flesh of quinces changes its color. However, it is essential to immerse the quinces in a bowl of water with several tablespoons of lemon or lime juice immediately after peeling to prevent them from turning brown.

No additives needed for coloring here – the leftover liquid from poaching the quinces, which I strained and filled into bottles, has the color of pink lemonade. We started mixing it with seltzer water for a refreshing soda. Nothing should go to waste, especially after you have worked so hard for it!

Here are two of the quince recipes. After I am done labeling all those jars, I will write down the others.

Spiced Quince Sauce

I initially thought the quince sauce needed to be sealed in a pressure cooker but I learned that ¼ cup of sugar per pound of fruit is enough for safe water batch canning.

Although it takes more time, and I really did not need that after all the peeling and coring, I strongly recommend grinding the spices yourself instead of using ground ones. The flavor is significantly better.

5¾ pounds peeled and cored quince chunks

1 tablespoon finely chopped organic lemon zest

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon ground allspice

½ teaspoon ground anise

½ cup orange juice

2 cups sugar

1. Put all the ingredients except for the sugar in a large heavy pot and cook, covered, until the quinces break apart, about 1 to 1¼ hours. Stir often to prevent burning.

2. Add the sugar at the end of the cooking process. Puree finely with a stick blender.

3. Fill the hot quince sauce in sterilized jars. The sauce is very thick and forms air pockets. To remove them, carefully stir the sauce with a long, thin utensil (I used a metal skewer).

4. Wipe the rim with a damp piece of paper towel to remove any drips and wipe dry with paper towel. Place the lids and the bands on the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

5. Let cool and set for 24 hours without moving the jars.

Makes four to five 1-pint jars

Chunky Orange-Cardamom Quince Compote

Quinces and oranges are a wonderful combination, and so are quinces and cardamom, so why not combine all three? This makes chunky quince compote that we ate with Greek vanilla yogurt.

1¾ pounds peeled and cored quince chunks

2 teaspoons dried orange peel

6 cardamom pods, finely ground

1/3 to ½ cup sugar, to taste

2 tablespoons Cointreau or other orange liqueur, to taste

1. Put the quinces in a heavy pot with the cardamom about ¼ inch of water to prevent burning. Cook, covered, for about 45 minutes, until the quinces are soft but not falling apart. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

2. Let cool, then stir in the orange liqueur. Refrigerate.

Makes 6 servings

Swan song? Hope not

| Green Card Gardener

The crabapples were plumper and larger than ever this year. This might not be a surprise after all the rain we had but for us, it is startling because in the spring it did not look as if the 25-year-old trees were going to make it.

After the snow melted, we realized serious bark damage on two-thirds of the trees. The bark had been chewed off all around from the ground to about a foot high. But then, as every year, the crabapples bloomed in the first week of May, making me want to cruise up and down our driveway again and again just to enjoy that gorgeous sight. Then came the drought in July, and the trees were still hanging in there.

And now this, a rich harvest! Such a severe damage to the bark is like removing the esophagus from a human body, totally disrupting food transportation. My explanation for the trees still being alive in mid-summer was that they must have had enough nutrients stored at the top. Whether these reserves could last a whole season I didn’t know.

I am marveling at this miracle, and at the same time I fear this might be the trees’ swan song. Meanwhile, I made crabapple jelly today, very much hoping that I will be doing exactly the same thing again this time next year.

Gingered Crabapple Jelly

To extract the juice from the crabapples, it is best to chop the crabapples coarsely in the food processor, then put them in the steam juicer. The amounts can be increased as needed with a juice to sugar ratio of 2:1.

2½ cups crabapple juice (unsweetened)

1¼ cups sugar

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1. Mix the juice and the sugar and cook in a heavy pot over low-medium heat for 1 hour. Remove any scum with a ladle or a large spoon.

2. Put a teaspoon full on a plate and wait a couple of minutes. If it is still runny, cook a few minutes longer and test again. If it gels but it still a little soft, it’s fine, as the jelly will solidify considerably upon cooling.

3. Pour the hot jelly in sterilized jars through a canning funnel. Wipe the rim with a damp piece of paper towel to remove any drips and wipe dry with paper towel. Place the lids and the bands on the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

9. Let cool and set for 24 hours without moving the jars. If processed properly, the jelly will keep for 1 year or more.

Makes 2 half-pint jars

After-the-storm elderberry sauce

| Green Card Gardener

After a power outage for two and-a-half days due to hurricane Irene, and the emergency evacuation of our freezer chest, filled almost to the top with produce from the garden, to friends who did not lose power, I had only limited energy left for lengthy food rescue operations.

The storm had knocked down several handfuls of elderberry clusters. Elderberries ripen unevenly so I usually leave them on the plant until all the berries are black, hoping I am quicker than the birds. The elderberry clusters I collected still had some green berries on them but that’s all right.

I have never made anything else than elderberry soup or jelly from elderberries. There were not enough storm berries for any of those but I know from Elderberry Soup that elderberries and apples are a good combination. So I made this easy after-the-storm elderberry sauce with apples. I had it with Greek yogurt but I can imagine it also delicious on cottage cheese, rice pudding, with waffles or pancakes.

Let’s hope we won’t have another storm like this in a long time but if we ever do, I will try the sauce with pears, which also complement elderberries very well.

Elderberry Sauce with Apples 

2 Gala apples

2.5 cups stemmed and washed elderberries

1 cinnamon stick

1 strip of organic lemon peel

½ cup sugar, to taste

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1. Peel and quarter the apples. Remove the core and cut the apples into ½-inch dice. Put them in a heavy saucepan with the elderberries, the cinnamon, lemon peel and sugar. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons water to prevent burning before the elderberries release their juice.

2. Bring to a boil and cook, covered, 15 minutes, until the apples are very tender and the berries are easily crushed with a spoon. Stir occasionally during cooking.

3. Cool slightly and remove the lemon peel and cinnamon stick. Pass through the finest plate of the food processor. Scrape the underside of the plate – a lot of the thick pulp gets stuck there.

4. Return the sauce to the pot. Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons cold water and add it to sauce. Stirring constantly, bring the sauce to the boil and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, until it thickens and looks no longer starchy. Taste for sugar. Let cool and refrigerate.

Makes about 1 cup

Cantaloupe regale

| Green Card Gardener

When I first started growing Charentais French breakfast melons from seed I was so hooked that I vowed I would never grow any other cantaloupe again. But a meager harvest last year, and late start due to a cold spring this year made me reconsider. So I bought four cantaloupe seedlings in May, a variety that came with a high recommendation from the nursery owner. Because I treated them rather as a backup, and not like the real thing, I did not even write down what I bought, which I now regret.

I do not regret growing them. For the past ten days my family has been feasting on large, sweet cantaloupes. I also set some super-ripe ones aside to make a few batches of my Cantaloupe Sorbet, yet this time I used lemon verbena instead of lemon balm, which I think is a step up.

The Charentais are just starting to ripen. By the time they are ready to harvest we will have had our fill so we will be quite happy with having a few breakfast-size melons to nibble on.