Sea Buckthorn (“catina”) & Orange Seedless Jam


Iridescent magic with good butter and home made bread….

Catina berries (and the Romanian word is just so much prettier and less cumbersome so I have adopted it) are available on roadside stalls and in markets all over Romania in the autumn.  They are the European Goji berry and when cooked (being pretty revolting raw unless doused liberally in honey ) take on slightly passion fruity flavours. I like how they respond well to a touch of citrus but not so much as to overpower the pure catina flavour.

i decided to apply the same method as for seedless redcurrant jam, something we Brits confusingly call redcurrant jelly…. I was very pleased with the results.  I am still tinkering around with adding some apple puree and juice and will see how that works out – for now this is the neat version…in all senses.

Gadgets and Gizmos

The food mill really does make a difference.  Hard to think how else to make a good puree. The seeds are pretty big and bitter so blitzing would be a disaster.

Ingredients

a quantity of  catina (sea buckthorn) berries – 3kg will yield approx 20-24 medium jars

1 orange – juice and zest

sugar – probably 2.5kg but you need to weigh your fruit pulp…all in the How To

How To

1. Boil your berries lightly in just enough water to cover them. Approximately 20 minutes

2. Pass them through a food mill to obtain a puree with the water they were boiled in.

3. Weigh the resulting puree and add the orange juice but not the zest.

4. Add the same weight of sugar as your puree.

5. Boil to obtain a set. See The Jam Making Rules. 

6. Add the orange zest

7. Jar in hot sterilised jars.

Fragrant Poached Quinces & Quince Jelly

The colour red

Quinces being a member of the rose family are naturally perfumed so to add aromatics to them might seem a little too much but this works beautifully – the star anise, the vanilla, the bay and the cinnamon all accentuating the quinces natural flavour.

I used to go to a restaurant in Beyoglu in Istanbul where the bottled poached quince were stacked up in enormous jars to last the winter and where they were used for the simple but delicious “kaymakli ayva tatlisi” (poached quinces in sugar syrup served with buffalo clotted cream). This was the inspiration behind my fragrant version and my “Bosphorous Afternoon Tea”…. these quinces, fresh scones, little glasses of dark sweet Turkish tea, “kaymak” and that view. Magic.

And as for that colour? how can something that starts off looking like an apple and a hard unforgiving apple at that end up a deep crimson red? The quince is unique in that it responds well to “over” cooking and in fact changes colour as it cooks.  The longer it cooks the deeper the colour.

Ingredients

2kgs quinces (if they are furry just rub the fur off with a damp cloth)
1 kg sugar
2 litres of water
4 star aniseed
2 cinnamon batons
2 vanilla sticks
2 bay leaves

Gadgets & Gizmos

A casserole dish or heavy bottomed saucepan with a well fitting lid.

How To

  1. Set the oven to 150C
  2. Peel the quinces and halve them.  Remove the core or if you want to you can do this part later when the fruit is soft.
  3. DO NOT THROW AWAY THE SKIN AND CORE! put that all in with the fruit as this is full of valuable pectin!
  4. Put all the ingredients in the pan and bring to the boil
    Once the mixture has boiled place in the oven
  5. Check periodically on the colour and softness. They are done when they are a nice rosy red and a knife slices through easily.  Approx 4-6 hours.  they are better if left overnight as they will take on more of the aromatics.  Use to make a crumble, tarte tatin or just eat with cream the Turkish way or ice cream or custard or yoghurt.

KEEP THE SYRUP THAT YOU DO NOT EAT COMPLETE WITH THE PEEL AND CORES  TO MAKE JELLY.

Quince Jelly

This jelly already has some sugar added as it started life as a light 2:1 syrup. Quinces are higher in pectin than even apples so now we can take this syrup and add some water. here is my recipe for this particular syrup made from the poached fruit.

Measure the syrup from the poached fruit.  Lets say you have 500ml of syrup.

Add 75% of the quantity of water. This would be 375ml.

Add the juice of 1 lemon (strictly not necessary from the pectin point of view but I like how citrus adds bright notes to jams and jellies)  for every litre approx of juice and also keep the zest for the same reason.

Add  80% sugar to your liquid.  here you would add 80% x 875 so 700g sugar

Boil until setting point – see  Jam Sessions – Rules for making jam

Add the lemon zest just before potting in hot sterilised jars.

You will have a beautiful bright fragrant jelly.

Apple & Mint Jelly

gold flecked and jewel like…

Now as a Brit I was brought up putting mint jelly and a fairly astringent mint jelly at that on roast lamb.  I still do like jams and jellies with meat, in particular redcurrant jelly with roast beef and cranberry & orange sauce with turkey of course. But this one is so fragrant that I love it spread on fresh bread and eaten with really good butter, or spread on fresh hot scones.

The secret to not having horrid black mint in your preserve is to chop the cleaned mint (important) right before you put it into the jelly, and to put it into the jelly when the jelly is in fact warm and just gelling and is not cooked to death by the hot liquid so that it then floats in the jelly rather than sinking.  To make sure the jam is sterilised you then water bath the jam for 30 minutes at 100C.

How To

Boil up one quantity of apple jelly made with whole apples and sugar – see frugal apple jelly

Test it for setting point (it should set fairly easily as its full of pectin) – see the Jam Sessions – rules to make Jam

let it cool until you can see it is gelling.  Chop the mint finely. Add to the jelly. Stir. Now Bottle it in sterilised jars.

Place the jars in a large saucepan or two saucepans of water. they should be covered. Bring to the boil. When boiling time for 30  minutes. Allow to cool.  Your jelly will now have liquefied again due to the heat but will re-set as it cools.