DH has mentioned quince a few times.
This year, for the first time, we've had lots of them on the tree, and DH picked them and put them in his workshop to finish ripening. He's been mentioning that they are getting very ripe, as what I'm sure he really wants to say is "for god's sake woman, you wanted this bloody tree, why don't you do something with the damned fruit"
So, yesterday, I set about doing something.
Firstly, I started on Quince Jelly. I ran out of home ade Quince Jelly some time ago. I bought some Tiptree Quince Jelly, and it wasn't anything special. The Quince Lady, who used to produce loads of stuff over in Henley, doesn't any more, so the only option pen to me was to make my own. So, I cleaned and chopped some, and put them on to simmer, then put them in a jelly bag to strain overnight.
Secondly, I had decided to try making Memnrillo, which I was sure I'd read someone had made using Thermy or CookEpert. I found a CookExpert recipe for Membrillo, on a spanish cook expert site, pasted it into Google Translate, and had a go at making some of that. It's currently sitting in trays, drying out, in my kitchen. It will be there for a few days. There's no point taking a picture yet as the trays are covered in parchment. One of the trays was a collapsible thing, specially designed for moulding of hot sticky confections, which I bought about 10 years ago to try making Turnkish Delight. Needless to say (but I'm going to), this is its first time being used.
This morning I woke up with a sugar headache, a result of testing the lscrapings of Membrillo from various stages yeaterday. The last thing I wanted to do was to make jelly. But I did.
I'm not sure my Jelly is going to set. It's a shame, because it looks amazing. It tastes heavenly. I remembered why I stopped making Jam as I cleared everything up. I even had to put the hob thingummies in the dishwasher.
There was a lot of juice still in the pulp, and I resisted the urge to squeeze the bag. Clear jellies only come from unsqueezed pulp. It seemed a shame to dispose of the pulp, so I blitzed it in the CookExpert, and decided to try drying it like fruit leather. It might not taste great, but I could probably turn it to powder and it would be a fab addition to apple pies.
I do have an electric jam maker, bought as a bargain from Lakeland some years ago and never used. I had previously had a Tefal electric jam maker, which I sold as I hadn't used it for a long time. I think I was suffering from sellers remorse when I was shopping in Lakeland the day I saw the Ball one at a much reduced price. I'm going to try using that to make a second batch. I'll use the same recipe (as the Ball website denies the existence of anything called Quince) as I do when I make it myself, but hopefully the jam maker will get me a good set. I hope so.
I looked in my old UK preserving book (from some food Council or other), and that explained how to test for pectin content BEFORE getting to the add sugar stage of the process. Getting an accurate guage of the pectin content impacts on how much sugar needs to be added, so it might be quite interesting to do. It involves methylated spirits, and I think I might try it tomorrow, before I attempt to use the electric thing.
Meanwhile, DH is thinking about bottling his off the cuff cider. When we juiced the final lot of apples, he decided to turn it in to cider. Hw used to make cider regularly, and had got good at it, but we'd got out of the habit.
The only ...what's the word? Teh thing that you put your stuff in and leave it to .... fermenter we had available at the time was a huuuuge one, and that's now been sitting on the breakfast bar for a while. We eat breakfast round it, and don't really noticce it when we're sitting down.
The kitchen is chaotic - even by our standards. We've got two other fermenters which have home made apple wine in (it's a bit strong!) on another worktop. We've got bags of kindling on the floor (the kindling box is a bit full), we've got the harvesting baskets piled up in 2 places on the side, a two tier shelf thing with membrillo on, the jars from the quince, the box with the unused quince in, and the last of the tomatoes to process. ....and that's without the mess that I've got on the kitchen table.
Once
the tomatoes are done, Preston (our enormous pressure canner) can go back in the
utility room, and that will make a difference to how junky the kitchen is.
Despite the chaos, I am plased I've at least tried to do something. It'll likely be tomorrow now before I prep the quince for juicing, so it'll be Monday before I make the next batch.
