Medlar jelly: bletting on the windowsill, straining through the night
The medlar tree at the end of the lane belongs to nobody in particular and nobody else picks it. The fruit is hard, brown-green and inedible in November; it has to be bletted, which means left to soften until it looks spoiled and is actually ready. I picked about 2 kilograms on the 23rd of November and laid them on a tray lined with newspaper on the spare room windowsill, where it stays around 12 degrees. By Christmas about half had gone soft and dark brown, with the flesh the texture of baked apple. The rest took until the first week of January.
Cooking is simple. The bletted fruit went whole into the pan with enough water to barely cover, about 1.2 litres, and simmered for 50 minutes until it collapsed into a brown mush with the pips and skins floating. I mashed it a little and tipped it into a jelly bag suspended from an upturned stool over a bowl, and left it overnight. The temptation to squeeze is enormous and must be resisted or the jelly goes cloudy. Fourteen hours later there was 850 millilitres of clear, pale brown juice in the bowl.
For the set I used 650 grams of sugar per litre of juice, so about 550 grams, plus the juice of one lemon because medlars are low in acid. A fast boil brought it to 105 degrees in about nine minutes, with the saucer test wrinkling at the second try. I potted it into four small jars and one half-jar for the fridge.
The result is a jelly the colour of dark amber, completely clear, with a flavour I find hard to describe to anyone who has not tried it: something like spiced apple and dates, slightly winy, a little tannic at the end. It is better with cheese than with bread. The yield is tiny for the work involved, which is why nobody makes it any more, and that is also rather the point.
Notes for next year: pick a week later so the bletting starts further along, and do not line the tray with newspaper, which stuck to the softest fruit and had to be peeled off with a knife. One jar is already promised to the neighbour who told me what the tree was.