QUINCES 2X (JANE GRIGSON)

 

Quinces Baked In The French Style (Coings Au Four)

Allow one for each person. Peel and hollow out the cores of six to eight quinces, being careful not to piece through the bottom of the fruit.  Sprinkle each one with lemon juice as you go.  Stand the quinces in a buttered gratin dish.

     Mix together to a cream 150 g (5 oz/2/3 cup) caster sugar, 100 g (3 ½ oz/scant ½ cup) lightly-salted or unsalted butter, and 3 generous tablespoons (1/4 cup) of whipping cream or double cream.  Stuff the quinces with this mixture – if there is some left, add halfway through the cooking.  Top each quince with a level tablespoon of sugar and bake at gas 5, 190 degrees C (375 degrees  F) until the quinces are tender.  Serve with cream and sugar.


Note:  Baked quince was Sir Isaac Newton’s favourite pudding.

Quince Vodka

A long time ago I wrote that quinces made everything delicious.  ‘Yes,’ replied one reader, ‘but first catch your quinces.’  And he enclosed a recipe for quince vodka, for those who can only bag a couple.

     Allow the quinces to become really ripe and yellow.  Wash them well, rinsing away any grey fluff that might remain.  Then grate them – peel, core and all – and put them into a litre bottling jar (1 ¾ pint/scant 4 ½ cups).  Add 60 g (2 oz/ ¼ cup) caster sugar.  Fill jar with vodka (or rum, gin or brandy for that matter).  The jar need not be full, but the fruit must be covered. Close tightly.  Leave in a dark place for at least two months.  Taste, and decide whether to leave for another two months or longer – it improves with time, and much depends on the quality of the quinces in the first place which can vary from year to year.  Add extra sugar if you prefer a liqueur sweetness; train off the liquor into a clean bottle.

From Jane Grigson's Fruit Book.

What a beautiful piece of fruit of such rare quality, like William Blake's extrarordinary 1795 rendering (color print with pen, ink and watercolor) of Isaac Newton as "divine geometer."   Yesterday we drove north from sweltering, parching heat into slightly less sweltering, parching heat.  Around dusk, a cooling storm erupted, scaring the daylights out of one of our dogs and reanimating the other, who is recovering from a malady and seemed actually to welcome the lightning, thunder and excitement.  The quince vodka pictured above, borrowed from the Baroque In Hackney blogger, who in turn borrowed it from The Quince Tree, looks exactly right for this climate, mood, breeze and moon.

READY FOR SUMMER: RED CURRANT WATER (FROM JANE GRIGSON'S FRUIT BOOK)

 

Red Currant Water

A refreshing drink on a hot day.  Processor liquidize ½ kg (1 lb) red currants with ½ litre of water, adding 2 good tablespoons (3 tbs) of sugar.  Put through a sieve, pressing on the pulp but not putting too much through.  Taste and add extra sugar if you like:  the flavour should be strong.   Store in the refrigerator.  Serve with ice cubes and soda water, adding gin or vodka if you like, as a cooling long drink.


    Why we do not make more of these waters in the summer I do not know:  cherry water and raspberry water do very well, especially if you add red currants to the fruit to sharpen it.  The thing is to drink them fresh, within a couple of days.  They can be stored in the freezer for longer periods , of course, but they take up quite a lot of room – if you have this in mind, reduce the quantity of water in the recipe.


From Jane Grigson's Fruit Book.  London, Penguin, 1982.  

Just for the record, this is ACravan Blogpost # 1,000!  Happy First Day Of Summer!

Greek Election Day Special: Kolyva On The Menu

Standing nervously on top of a tall ladder yesterday and worrying even more than I usually do, I doubled down (as they say all the time on the news these days) on fear and thought about today’s elections in Greece, which seem to affect so much and so many.  


I mean, it’s really serious business and, although all the media coverage in the world can’t seem to pull any logical thread through the events there, which have been unfolding for so long now, the Repertory Theater of the Unsound Mind that is CNBC (standing in here for all of the media business news outlets) seems continually to be revolving through cycles of Greek Tragedy and Greek Comedy, adding only occasionally some Greek History to the mix. 

Seeking safer harbor and anchorage in the birthplace of Western Civilization, from my ladder perch (I was changing light bulbs in a crystal chandelier) I pondered for several minutes the significance of Kolyva, Greece’s “cycle of life” dessert that is traditionally served at funerals and at Lent.

In her Fruit Book, in the chapter on Pomegranates, Jane Grigson writes memorably about her first encounter with Kolyva in Cyprus:


“We had gone one day to the easternmost tip and promontory of the island to stand on the high site of Aphrodite’s shrine, and look across to Syria, where she had come from.  The road went through a monastery courtyard.  In the morning it was empty.  In the late afternoon, it was full of families, spending the day in little cells. People rushed about, women carried their best bowls carefully and we saw they were full of wheat, decorated with silver bits and pieces and pomegranate seeds.   

Later on, I discovered this special dish is called Kolyva, and its ingredients have a special meaning.  It is made for funerals, and I think that the Sunday we were there was the Greek Orthodox Easter, when the hopelessness of Lent turns to joy, the darkness of Good Friday becomes the Resurrection.  In this dish, said to be a pre-Christian ceremonial dish, wheat stands for everlasting life, raisins and nuts for joy and sweetness, pomegranate seeds for plenty and fertility.  The day ended in another church, with candles, everyone giving us candles, everyone lighting their candles from their neighbors’.  As we drove home in the twilight, we passed other churches with their doors open and more candles burning inside. A greeting for Persephone on her return?”

Here is Jane Grigson’s recipe for Kolyva, an ancient dish connoting austerity, darkness-before-the-light and, one sincerely hopes, rebirth:

½ kg (1 lb) whole wheat, soaked overnight
½ teaspoon salt
300 g (10 oz/2 ½ cups) white flour
125 g ( 4 ½ oz/ 2/3 cup) sultanas
1 tablespoon (2tbs) cumin seeds
1 tablespoon (2 tbs) ground cinnamon
60-75 g (2-3 oz/1/4 – 1/3 cup) sugar
250 g (8 oz/2 cups) walnuts, finely chopped
1 tablespooon (2tbs) chopped parsley (optional)
icing sugar
blanched almonds
silver dragees and balls
seeds from one or two pomegranates

Drain the wheat, then put in a pan and cover generously with water.  Simmer until wheat is soft, about two hours, add the salt and simmer for another minute or two.  Spread on a cloth to dry.  Brown the flour carefully and slowly in a heavy pan over a low heat until it is golden.  Take care not to burn it. Mix half the flour with the wheat, add sultanas, spices and sugar.  Spread into a large shallow bowl, making the top flat.  Mix walnuts and parsley and spread evenly over the top, then cover with the remaining flour.

     Sift icing sugar over the top, pressing it down with a spatula or waxed paper.  Decorate with almonds, silver dragees and balls, and the pomegranate seeds.  At a funeral, there would be a silver cross in the centre, the initials in almonds on either side, and decorative borders of pomegranate seeds and the almonds and silver things.

See you (for ouzo on Mykonos) after the election.