Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

It’s this time of the year again! An abundance of ripe fruit on the trees invite us to get a big pot out, rinse the preserving jars and dream up a recipe.

Last year I posted a recipe for apple jelly with rose oolong, this year I was inspired by a whole load of quince we picked off a gnarly old tree by the stream just behind our house. Quince in New Zealand look different from the quince I know from Germany (NZ quince are way smaller and not anywhere near as hard), so it took me a while to figure out that these fruit were indeed quince. But since quince jelly has been one of my favourite jellies since childhood, I was very excited to get them cookin’.

I love to introduce tea flavours into my food, so I started thinking about complementary flavours for quince. The smell of the ripe fruit is reminiscent of apples, with hints of pineapple and some citrus fruit. It dawned on me, that an oolong would be the perfect match, more specifically our organic Ba Xian Dancong with its slight fruitiness and floral notes.
The following measurements are approximate and depend on a number of factors, including your preference for sweetness and firmness in a jelly, the ripeness of the fruit, etc. Quince have a high pectin content, so the addition of a setting mix is usually not necessary.

Ingredients (makes about 4-5 medium size jars):

• 1.5 to 2kg ripe quince (makes about 1l of juice)
• 0.5l water
• ~700g sugar
• 8-10g Dancong oolong
• 10ml lemon or lime juice (optional)

Wash the fruit thoroughly, remove the stem and flower and chop into medium size cubes. Using the whole fruit including skin and core adds to the flavour and releases more pectin. In a large pot, add 0.5l of water to the fruit, cover and slowly cook for 45 mins until the fruit is soft. Then strain the liquid through a cheesecloth.
While the fruit is cooking, measure out the tea leaves and infuse them with 0.2l of boiling water for about 15 sec. This tea is for you to drink, enjoy it! This short infusion opens up the leaves and makes it easier to release their flavour later into the more viscous fruit juice/sugar mix.
Next, you measure out 1 litre of quince juice, add the tea leaves, around 700g sugar, and optionally the lemon or lime juice (which helps the pectin to act as a thickener if the fruit is very ripe and doesn’t have enough acidity). If your fruit is still quite green, you might have to add a bit more sugar to compensate for the sourness of the fruit, but you won’t need it for preservation!
Heat the mix and keep it at a rolling boil for about 4-5 minutes, keeping a close watch since it tends to boil over quickly. Perform your preferred jellying test and strain (to remove the tea leaves) into freshly washed and boiled jars. I laid one tea leaf into the bottom of each jar for decoration and additional flavouring. Turn the jars upside-down for about 5 minutes and let them cool slowly.

Enjoy the jelly by itself on a slice of freshly baked bread or together with a nice aged cheese. It is divine!

We can’t offer you any quince, but if you’d like to purchase some of our gorgeous Ba Xian Dan Cong (or Eight-Immortals Phoenix oolong), you can order some for $9.70 / 20g sample or $36.40 / 100g (If you’d like to buy some, please visit our ordering page)

Tags [ quince | jelly | receipe | jelly receipe | dancong | cooking with tea ]