Quince Paste or Dulce de Membrillo

 

Today I’d like to share one of my favourite sweets: quince paste, or the Spanish Dulce de Membrillo. It’s the time to make it as Christmas is coming and the quinces are nicely ripened.

I don’t make it very often as you really need to have the right conditions for it to turn out well. First you take nicely ripened quince and scrub off the furry stuff on their skin. Below you can see cleaned quince in the tray with the darker, ‘furry’ ones at the side.

                                               
You place your fruit in a baking tray along with a little water and you bake them whole, skin on, until they have nicely softened.  Then, skin still on😊, you cut them into chunks, discarding the stone in the middle. At this point you weigh how much of the cleaned fruit you have. The chunks are then blitzed in a blender until you get a smooth creamy substance.  You may need to add a little water to the mix for it to blend freely.                                                     

Having weighed the fruit previously, you now place the pulp in a large pot along with roughly the same weight of sugar. Not liking things too sweet, I tend to add less sugar and add lemon juice to taste.

                                                            

It’s now that I add my secret ingredient, though this is optional. This is the leaf of a plant known in Greece as arbaroriza or scented geranium. Its proper botanical name is pelargonium graveolens. In the past we have made a surprisingly delicate liqueur simply by adding some leaves and sugar to retsina. Best tasting retsina ever, and with a beautiful fragrance.

So, the sugar, fruit and 3 or 4 leaves are boiled until the mixture comes together to form a thick mass, separating from the sides of the pan.                                                    

Let this cool down a little then spread it fairly thinly and evenly onto a tray lined with parchment paper. My four large quinces produced enough to spread over two 10 x13 inch trays. The surface is then brushed generously with any kind of alcohol which helps form a skin. I find brandy goes nicely with the fruit’s rich flavour.

Now comes the hard part - the trays should be set in a nice, sunny room for about 3 days to dry out. My quinces waited uncooked for over a week until we got 3 consecutive days with guaranteed sun!  I've another batch of fruit ready to be processed but it doesn’t look as if our weather will oblige soon. ☹

                                                          

Once the paste has dried out, you cut it into pieces – I like diamond shapes– and liberally coat with sugar and set out on plates to complete the drying out process.

                                                

If this is rigorously done, your paste will last for months  - this produced over 100 pieces.

                                                   
They look like beautiful, gleaming gems which can make for sweet Christmas presents.  I love serving them at the end of a meal with cheese, oatcakes and port.

                                          

 There you go!

Olive harvesting.

 

All other chores and obligations are cast aside – our olives must be harvested! Some of the black olives are already soft and falling to the ground, while the green olives – a different type- are swollen but could do with a couple of weeks more to flesh out and produce more oil.

                                                

We have to find the middle ground and harvest now before the black ones begin to spoil. First we walk round the trees and pick up any windfall berries that are in good condition.

                                                          

Then we lay the nets which are doubled so we can catch the fruit there and avoid it falling through the mesh. The nets are a real attraction for Prunella who loves to tunnel in between the two layers. She also loves playing with the olives - rolling them with her paws, then chasing after them. Keeps her happy for a wee while!                                                   

 From the branches we can easily reach, we comb the off olives and let them fall on the net – being careful not to tread on them.                                           

Those higher up get felled either by Z climbing up and picking them off or by him wielding a big stick and bashing them off – hi-tech stuff (staff?)  this!

                                            

Mr Mao is, of course, also present but is not nearly as active as Prunella.He finds the most comfortble, sunny spot where he can stretch out or curl up and relax. Now, if this happens to be on top of the nice, warm berries in a half-filled crate- so be it!                                         

Here we are proudly displaying the 260 kilos we collected – just the two of us.

                                        

And below are the plastic drums containing our golden harvest. All in all, our trees produced 36 kilos of oil which should keep us going for a couple of years.                                       

                                                                   Our liquid gold!