elaine jones

Quoting from message
<1184966393.369202.193930@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups. com>
posted on 20 Jul 2007 by CP
I would like to add:

No but (on googling)

http://www.winealchemy.com/wa_chosen...review.php?id=
5

The medlar is an orchard fruit, and has a long history in
the UK but has fallen from favour in the last hundred years.
It’s an oddity in that for culinary purposes medlars aren'’t
ready until they have rotted slightly, or "“bletted”. Leave
them on the tree until they start to fall, usually sometime
in November, and then bring them in to blett. This involves
laying them in boxes in straw or paper and leaving them in a
dry place. A few weeks later they’ll feel plump & soft to
touch and will have a slightly volatile, alcoholic smell.
Pick them over at this point – some may need discarding if
mouldy – and then squeeze the flesh out of the skin, pips
and all, into a coarse sieve. The flesh then needs forcing
through the sieve to separate it from the pips. What you
have in the bowl is a brown pulp that looks like chestnut
puree. This medlar pulp is ready for further preparation.

So, what to do with it?

The simplest solution, offered by Dorothy Hartley in Food in
England (1954), is to mix the pulp with cream & brown sugar.
The result is a rich, appealingly granular mousse with a
lovely flavour – parts chocolate, nut & coffee, parts
savoury & sharp, and all lifted by the slight volatility
from the bletting. Hartley’s other suggestion is to treat
the bletted medlars like apples for baking, with butter &
cloves.

This year I’m going to try making Medlar Tart. Not much to
go on in terms of recipes, but I’ll use as my model the idea
of adding medlar pulp to a thick custard and then bake it in
a tart case. There’s a suggestion here
(http://www.ars-grin.gov/cor/cool/medlar.tart2.html), but
I’m not convinced to use evaporated milk as the base,
preferring the thick custard instead. The ginger & cinnamon
seem like they should be complementary and I'’ll put a
little of each in.

seem like reasonable suggestions.

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