MAGIC BEAN WOODY FREE
In return for their warmth and hospitality, they received an abundance of attention and goodwill, including a spot in the UN Refugee Agency’s beautiful free cookbook, “Tastes From Home.”Įating kibbe bi safarjaliyeh, a savory meat and quince dish from Aleppo, Syria, on the first night of Eid stirs up happy memories. The sweet sounds like gliko, a sugar-saturated confit of fruit from the southern Albanian city of Përmet, which the Slow Food Presidium has protectively embraced, calling it “a largely forgotten gastronomic treasure.”Ī year ago, Aya Wadi and her mother, Duha Shaar, opened a restaurant, Royal Aleppo Food, in Thunder Bay, Ontario. “When my family would visit on a high-holiday afternoon, she would serve thin slices of candied quince along with strong coffee.” “There were three trees in her yard, and she put the fruit down every fall,” she says. Out of a desire to hold tight to the memory of her Armenian grandmother, Barbara Ghazarian wrote a cookbook, “Simply Quince” (Mayreni Publishing, 2009). Ripe fruit is preserved into jams, jellies and sweet pastes. It has grown wild for centuries, and agrarian Levantine, Sephardic and Orthodox Christian communities around the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea and North Africa cook with it.
“The Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian seas are the fruit’s center of origin,” says Postman. Sometimes, the fruit is available out of season, but cut into it, and the flesh is brown throughout from late harvesting or growing and storing in suboptimal conditions. The tree thrives in hot, dry conditions and is not terribly cold tolerant. Quince season is short, from October into December, and crops are as small as demand. Spooning wedges out of ruby syrup on a blustery day is restorative for the senses and spirit. The plant pigment anthocyanin is responsible, and the intensity depends on the varietal’s tannin content. Watching the fruit turn a sunset palette of rose-orange shades while poaching is a small miracle. It needs cooking – and not just a little. For kitchen tool geeks, a peach pitting spoon works like a charm. Slice the fruit into wedges and then carefully cut out the core by making a deepish V with a paring knife or using a melon baller. The core has an almond-like shape, and the membrane containing the tiny mahogany seeds – the endocarp – is thick and tough. The flesh is dense, dry, a little woody even. “In the orchard, the ripe fruit is so fragrant it’s a challenge to evaluate individual varieties for aroma,” says Joseph Postman, retired curator and plant pathologist at the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository.Ĭutting into the fruit the first time is a strange experience.
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