Quince Jam

When Russ and I first saw the farm we now own, we immediately fell in love with the mature orchard. There are six or eight apple trees and a couple plum,  some pear, crab-apple and this weird fruit I had never heard of: quince. Well, we bought the place and moved in at the perfect time and were able to harvest  tons of fruit. The quince was one of the more prolific trees and it was flush with large greenish pear shaped fruits. I had to do a lot of research to figure  out what the heck i was going to do with 50+ pounds of the stuff. I discovered that this amazing fruit used to be more common as a household food  long ago. It was actually the first fruit used to make marmalade. It is still very common in European countries and I suppose you might be  able to find it in a larger city with a diverse population.

It is in the rose family and related to apples. It looks like a fuzzy pear and when ripe turns a golden yellow. If you grab one off a tree and try to take a bite you'd get a nasty surprise as it is a very tart and puckery raw fruit. It really needs to be  cooked for its full glory to be expressed. One of the coolest things i discovered is that if you cook it long enough it turns a rosy pink or deep crimson. I have not yet achieved that color but am going to try later this week when I cook another batch.

I spent a large part of this evening making 34 half-pints of quince jam. As far as jams go, it is pretty darn simple. I followed a recipe (more or less) that I found at Mother Earth News. I cooked the jam on the stove for a while - maybe an hour? I really wanted to cook it longer to see if i could get that rosy color but I was afraid it would get too stiff and not spread so easily. It is a different taste to be sure, but I like it.

My next big quince adventure will be making mebrillo. It is a Spanish treat that is sometimes called quince butter or quince paste. It is basically the same recipe for jam but cooked for a very long time in a low heat oven so that most of the moisture evaporates an all that is left is a rosy red jelled candy like substance. I've seen recipes on line that suggest eating it sliced with manchego cheese. Gotta try that!

You might be asking yourself, what the heck does one do with 34 jars of quince jam? Holiday gifts galore! Nothing says "I love you" more than a homemade gift.