Sunflower Savannah: Quince and First December Market

We will be at the Urban Chestnut Brewery at
3229 Washington Ave, Saint Louis, MO 63103
on December 1st from 12-4 PM

This will be a great time to stock up with Jams, Jellies, Granolas, Salsa, Pickled items for holiday gifts. If you have someone who's hard to buy for, our booth is the place. We have an awesome Garlicky Chili sauce, kinda like that pureed Chili sauce that you see at Thai restaurants but it's made with local ingredients. It or Pickled Hot Peppers make a great gift for someone who likes it HOT. Granola is a healthy and sweet stocking stuffer.
We will also have Missouri Pecans, Pears, Salad Mix, Grass Fed Lamb, Eggs and yes, there are still Tomatoes.

After waiting for several weeks for our Heirloom Meech's Prolific Quince to soften, they started getting black Spots on them but were still rock hard. During further research I discovered that Quince never softens until degrading or cooked. It is ripe when it has a fruity citrusy(books say citrusy, I say pineappley) aroma and is bright yellow. So we cooked them, well several of them anyway. The trees produced 8. 1 split and spoiled, 3 and a half we made into Jam, 1.5 we poached, 1 we sampled and I saved 1 for Steve McGhee with Slow Food. He's had a great interest in this project.
In any case, what came out of our first experiments was extremely interesting. While research stated that Quince are very high in fiber, I was unprepared for the 3.5 quince that I used with only corresponding sugar, granted it was 40% Sugar to fruit, but still, that small amount of fruit to sugar- no pectin as quince makes it's own pectin, this produced 14 -4 oz. jars of jam and a sample of about 3/4 of a pint. Another interesting thing about these fruit is that while the skin is Green until ripe and then bright yellow, when you cut it, to the naked eye the flesh looks cream or off white but when you photograph it, the camera picks up the pigment that causes the fruit to turn pick and then red, the longer its cooked.

The jam we made was only cooked for a short amount of time, it set really quickly for not adding any pectin, it was only a light orange. It actually was a little lighter than this picture.

The poached quince was cooked overnight in a crockpot and this is how it turned out.

Left, Raw Quince, Right Jam and Center Poached with absolutely no added color. Intriguing, no?

After our tasting, I used the remainder of the poached quince along with the 1/2 pint that I didn't have enough jars to can and made some more jam. It's a little different than the straight jam since it has a few spices in it but still, it's pretty good.

There was almost no loss in the preparation of the fruit.

There is a small core but everything else is edible. I did not peel them.