THE PRESERVATIONIST

THE PRESERVATIONIST AUTUMN

By Jordan Champagne Quince Jelly and Apple Butter

Autumn: It’s my favorite time of the year. We have all had a tasteful journey through cherries, peaches, plums, tomatoes, cucumbers and all the other flavors made manifest under the summer’s sun. We have worked hard to preserve the bounty of this season’s harvest: Strawberry jam, crushed heirloom tomatoes, honeyed cherries, pickles and, of course, apples all help to preserve summer’s energy, captured in a jar to keep us going all winter long. It is time to celebrate! Let the harvest festivals begin!

It is autumn and the old-timers are coming out of the woodwork. Look…they are firing up their 1950s GMC pickups and loading them with half-ton bins of apples. The “built like a workhorse” trucks wind their way down the hills into downtown Watsonville, eventually pulling up to a local landmark: Martinelli’s apple pressing facility. The farmers are in their 80s and remember when Watsonville had a few more apple orchards and a few less roads and the ones that did exist led to Martinelli’s.

In the spirit of those local traditions revolving around apples and food preservation, Happy Girl Kitchen Co. is planning an apple cider pressing party! Come and celebrate autumn and the apple harvest of the region. Community, family and friends are invited to come together and preserve some of the local apple harvest.

The Harvest Pressing Party will be on September 17 from noon to 5pm at our café in Pacific Grove. We will press apple cider, make apple butter and apple sauce and feast on apple cobbler. All will share in the work—and in the loot! Happy Girl Kitchen will have one ton of local organic apples on hand, so tell your friends… Oh, and don’t forget to bring those carboys for the hard cider lovers among us!

Here is a peek at two recipes, Quince Jelly and Apple Butter, that can be wonderful at such fall parties. I have sized them so they can be done at home with one or two friends, if you just cannot make it to the harvest party. Enjoy and happy harvesting!

Quince Jelly

Courtesy of Jordan Champagne of Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

Quince, a cousin to the pear and apple, is a nearly forgotten fruit. Many folks let them fall dejected to the ground, unappreciated because quince are unpalatable when raw. Like biting into an unripe persimmon or banana, the quince is very astringent and chalky. Once cooked, its yellow color melts into a rosy pink and a sweet floral essence is released.

Quince is a wonderful fruit for jelly making because it has such a high content of pectin. I always reduce or completely omit the use of sugar when I adapt recipes with the exception of making jelly: Sugar is what gives jelly its beautiful thick, quivering consistency. I can remember many failed experiments trying to reduce the amount of sugar, and have resolved to simply use less jelly on my toast instead! Quince can also be made into butter, sauces or preserved whole, but I think jelly really illuminates its essence very well.

5 pounds quince 8 pints water 2 cups sugar (I prefer evaporated cane juice) to each 2 1/2 cups of quince juice 12 large rose geranium leaves

Wash quince and chop roughly—including peels and cores.

Place in pot with water and simmer gently for about 50 minutes, or until soft and pulpy.

Strain through a jelly bag or cheesecloth.

Measure the juice and return to cleaned pan. Should have about 10 cups. Heat up juice and add appropriate amount of sugar until completely dissolved.

Bring to a boil and boil rapidly until setting point is reached, about 15 minutes. Hot pack into jars.

Yields 10 1/2 pints of jelly.

Happy Girl Kitchen Co.’s café, the site of Happy Girl’s fall harvest party, is located at 173 Central Ave. in Pacific Grove. For more information, go to www.happygirlkitchen.com.

For Champagne’s Apple Butter recipe and her basic canning instructions, please go to the EMB website.