Cooks' Corner

[brianw]

Over 3 years since food questions ;-)

It has been a disastrous year here for plums. apples and raspberries. Late frosts, very hot dry summer, and now spasmodic rain and drought again. Some dahlias I left in last winter survived fine; but have yet to come into flower, and I need to reseed patches of brown lawn. I have watered the shrubs and young trees at times when the leaves collapsed, and a young magnolia flowered a few weeks ago, and now my Cercis has started flowering; feebly.

But what I do have from a young trees' first fruiting is 50 or so large quince. It is Serbian Gold variety. We have a very old quince in an overgrown corner that produces very poor fruits that we have never used, but the new tree in the open has glorious blossom and now; large globular (not pear shaped) fruit so heavy that I have had to prop all the young branches up to stop collapse.
BUT when do I pick them? I can discover online suggestions as how to use them but when do I start? The largest are now over 3" diameter.

[Maggi Young]

First sign of ripeness is the colour - are they turning yellow?  As with apples, if you  lift  up a fruit and it does not readily  detach from the tree, then it is not yet ripe.  I think it is possible to ripen quince off the tree ( probably in  bowl with a banana) but I'd  wait till they are a good yellow colour and smell nice before picking them to get a better flavour.

[ArnoldT]

I'm having a second flush of growth and flowers here on Caville Blanc apples.  First time for this for me here.

[Palustris]

Quince from Cydonia as opposed to Chaenomeles are ripe when they are yellow and the fur has gone. They also begin to  have that lovely scent which is a hallmark of Quince. Also they are easy to remove from the tree when ripe. BUT not to worry, they will ripen up in the house as said.
If, like us, you want to make Quince Jelly then the easiest way is to put the stalkless fruits in a slow cooker, no water and cook on high for 2 hours or until the are soft. They turn to mush,  Add a pint and a half of water in a pan with them and boil them up (rolling boil). We then leave the pan to cool and strain off the liquid. 1 pint of liquid to a pound of sugar. You need to add lemon juice or use Jam making sugar.

[ian mcdonald]

I did not know about Cooks Corner so here is one. Cullen Skink. 12 ozs. smoked haddock. 1 chopped onion. 2 pints of water. 1/2 pint of milk. 1lb of potatoes. salt and pepper to taste. 2 oz of butter. Some chopped parsley. 4 tablespoons of thick cream.
Place the fish, onion seasoning and water in a large pan. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Peel the spuds and boil until they are soft. Drain and mash the spuds and put on one side. Lift the fish from the stock in the pan and break into small pieces. Check for fish bones and remove if found. Strain the stock and return it to the pan. Add the fish, milk, butter and spuds. Simmer for a few minutes. Add cream and parsley. Either eat hot or place in freezer. This is not my recipe and it may be subject to copyright?

[François Lambert]

I planted twice a quince tree in the garden, both died.  The first one had strongly damaged roots from being transplanted and in the end the roots just rotted away.  The second one was grafted on a hawthorn rootstock, but the quince graft died.  I do have a nice hawthorn growing now.  So, when my brother gave me some quinces a couple of year ago I saved some of the pits and sowed these immediately.  Last year I had about 20 seedlings of quinces and I planted one of these in the garden this spring.  The other ones have been transplanted to a temporary bed in the vegetable garden and I will plant them out next spring between the meadows.  Now I just need to wait a couple of years more for my first quinces.  But then I'm fine for centuries since quince trees can live for 500 year.

I tried to sow medlar pits (mespilus Germanicus) some years ago, but none germinated (they need a cold - warm - cold stratification, so germination is only in the second spring after sowing).  I make liquor and jelly with the medlar.  Still need to figure out what I should do differently to make medlar pits germinate.  I have sown prunus spinosa, which requires the same stratification, with great success.

Since I live in the 'Pajottenland' I also have the one and only Schaarbeekse kriek growing in my garden (the indigenous sour cherry that was used to make the famous kriekenbeer - now most kriekenbeer is made with imported sour cherries, but not with the real stuff).  This small tree also occurs naturally in the borders of pastures and bushy roadsides.  This tree is said to grow only in this area (so just a natural habitat of something like 500 square kilometer).  The habitat of the tree also coincides with the region where we can brew the geuze beer, which is a beer from spontaneous fermentation.  Add krieken to the geuze (technically it's called lambic, geuze is a blend of lambics), wait 6 months until the fruits have been digested by the beer and the sugar turned into alcohol, and you get the kriek-beer.  A match made in heaven.
Anyway, after processing my krieken harvest last year I sowed a few 100 pits, and I have now about 100 seedlings.  In previous years I just throwed the pits on the compost and never saw anything germinate on the compost, so I was hoping on perhaps one or just a few pits to germinate.  I'm quite happy with these seedlings, just wondering what I should do with all those trees now, I have enough to start an orchard.

[brianw]

My "round" Serbian Gold fruit are just showing a hint of yellow; at least my imagination says they are, but they are still growing in size and I can't smell anything yet. The older tree with tradition pear shaped fruit now has a definite yellow green, but still little smell. I have picked 1 and put on the kitchen windowcill to see if it changes. Maybe this is one of those things you put with ripe fruit to trigger it using the natural ethylene. They are still hairy except where moving leaves rub it off.

An area near me was once famous for cherry orchards, particularly the Prestwood area. Most are now long gone and built on. I would guess it was similar to Morello cherries. My Morello died last year unfortunately so we have to buy Sainsburys cherry pies now.

[meanie]

Home made Baked Beans

Take some garlic (or not if you prefer) and one medium onion, dice and add to a casserole dish with olive oil (or good rapeseed oil). If you want to add bacon lardons do so now. Sweat until the onion is soft. Add tomato puree and stir through until the oil is separating.
Add three tins of washed beans of your choice (I use red kidney, butter beans and chick peas) and one carton of passata. Add salt to taste, dried oregano, a hearty pinch of nigella seeds, smoked paprika to taste and a desert spoon of honey. You can also add chopped chorizo at this stage if you wish.
Gently bubble away on the hob or put in the oven at 160°c for an hour until it is nicely thickened but not stodgy.
Serve with nice bread, cut thickly, toasted and dripping in butter.
You can use rehydrated dried pulses as well but as described above it is something that can just be knocked up using store cupboard basics rather than planned.

Top tip - buy tinned butter beans from Aldi, Lidl or even Poundstretcher. They're much harder than the ones sold in the more traditional supermarkets so take the cooking better and don't disolve.

[Maggi Young]

Blonde Ingrid showed this  yesterday .....


 with the comment .... "Great time of the year -  Membrillo production commences!"

 I'm just picturing the blisters after all that gets prepped.

[meanie]

Quince adds flavour to apple pie/crumble. I usually go 80/20 ish if I have enough available. It's also fun watching the unknowing picking at the red bits trying to work out if it is safe to eat without having to ask 

[Maggi Young]

 Cooks may like to learn a bit about  "growing your own"  vegetables - what about this  forth-coming book from former NARGS president, Matt Matthus?
"Mastering the Art of Vegetable Gardening" is available on pre-order from Amazon...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Art-Vegetable-Gardening-Varieties/dp/0760361924/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543584693&sr=8-1&keywords=Mastering+the+Art+of+Vegetable+Gardening

[Hannelore]

I recommend this book:

For those who do not understand German: How to harvest fresh vegetables during the Winter:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frisches-Gem%C3%BCse-Winter-ernten-Erntekalender/dp/370662592X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543586345&sr=8-1&keywords=Wolfgang+Palme

The funniest report in this book: Palme quotes a gardening book of 1650 (!) wherein the author complains that people believe that green lettuce is not hardy, because this is reported even in Gardening books. Green lettuce is hardy and as prove Palme shows an actual photo of it in the snow.

I tried his instructions and see what I have now:

[François Lambert]

Some varieties of lettuce are indeed perfectly hardy.  There is even something called 'weewenteelt' over here, wich is planting out young lettuce out in fall, they overwinter and then start to grow in early spring.  I tried this with great success in one year, but the next year the crop was heavy, but also heavilly loaded with aphids.  The second year our chickens were very happy to eat all the lettuce.  Cauliflower can also be grown in the same way to have a very early crop - preferably planted in an unheated greenhouse.

After these experiments I returned to the 'safer' cultivation of varieties of leaf cabbage and swiss chard which also provide from late winter on a heavy flush of new leaves to harvest.  And these plants are pest-free.

[brianw]

There is mention on another discussion group of growing rhubarb from seed, in California in the recent past. Never thought of this being viable here in the UK as a potential short term crop and it appears there, and in Australia and New Zealand, it may have been grown for a few years before starting again from new seed. Maybe they do the same in Yorkshire in the “Yorkshire Triangle”? Has anyone tried this as an annual or biennial crop? I quite like the narrow stemmed rhubarb I get from forcing, but I overdid it last year and had to uncover just as the weather went hot and mine got scorched off badly. It will take me a year or two to get decent crowns back. I see an Australian seed supplier refers to it as French rhubarb, but that may just be a selling push.

[fermi de Sousa]

...I see an Australian seed supplier refers to it as French rhubarb, but that may just be a selling push.

Oui,
à votre santé
fermi