Medlars, Barbra Streisand, Airfix and two sheriff's badges

Abundance: 9 November 2023

It’s the first morning that the air - rather than the wind - bites cold. The sky is the blue I’d paint the underside of the old man’s Airfix planes when he trusted me to; the sea - lapping softer than it has for a fortnight - straight out of The Way We Were.

The three mile morning walk I do takes 42 minutes when I’ve a mind to get a bead on; today it’s calmer and differently good with my wife for company. 

The medlar tree, planted a year ago, sits just to the side of the garden path and for the last few weeks its changing leaves have caught the eye every time I’ve passed it. Each looks like a miniature river basin seen from above: yellow river, green shallows, yellow inlets, and orange-brown floodplain.

Today, as we get back, we check the fruit: half are firm, half soft, a few already fallen. Too young to produce enough for two harvests - the softer ones first, leaving the others to develop a while - the choice is leave them and lose some of the ripest to the slugs beneath, or pick the lot and figure out how to use them later. We chose the latter, persuaded as much by the pleasure of being unexpectedly in sunlight. We fill our coat pockets quickly, our hands too: the definition of not a lot but plenty.

Two decades ago, we moved to the middle of the land between Dartmoor and Exmoor, to two and a bit acres of dampish ground, where we threw weekends and evenings into growing food. We had little idea. We grew too much of some and too little of others, but - it turns out - the food is only part of the point.

An old secondhand book had us planting a medlar - a forgotten fruit, supposedly similar in flavour to cooked apple and dates. We left before it could fruit.

We moved an hour towards the coast: somewhere the wind didn’t start blowing on 1 April and stop on 31 March. That winter, along with a very great deal of things, I planted an orchard of medlars - perhaps 40 trees - with a single one left over. I planted it on a long stony island between the river and a ditch, where the sun would hit its leaves for every minute of every day.

I’d see it as I approached and left the polytunnel, as I crossed the bridge into the far field, and as I span the tractor - mowing up and down the pecan and persimmon orchard - I’d catch sight of it and how it was developing. Alone, it showed off its medlar qualities even more clearly - a lazy irregularity of branches and a trunk growing with little respect for trees’ vertical norms. This single tree became the barometer for the medlar orchard a few hundred yards away: it served notice; when its fruit was ready, that we had a few days - a week, perhaps - until those in the far field would need harvesting too.

When I picked medlars with my young daughter, it was from that lone tree. One small tree, one small harvest, nothing overwhelming like a whole orchard. When we were done, she felt like a grown up, and little did she know those were the moments of my week.

We left the farm¹ over 5 years ago and while I’m ok with that - you have to live looking forwards more than back - there are a few little things that bob to the surface now and again, and that medlar island is one.

Last year, in the front garden of the house we’ve been in for three years - where we might see it from many windows, where we would pass it leaving and returning to the house, under whose shade herbs and artichokes might grow - we planted a medlar.

Today, it filled our pockets and hands with 1106g of fruit.

1106g of fruit has little power to inspire guilt. Whatever the weather, however busy you maybe, you can find a delicious use for 1106g of fruit.

Medlar sticky toffee pudding may be the reason I was sent to this planet, and a couple of 200g packs of medlar puree in the freezer mean I already have the necessary for this wintery essential. So this year, something different. 

Six or 7 years ago at the farm, I set about making membrillo - essentially, a posh Spanish fruit pastille made with quince - but an early arrival meant I had to cut it short. I jarred it anyway, hoping it would make an ok jam. I tried it next morning - a glorious carnelian lava somewhere between syrup and jam, that over the following months found it’s way into dressings, onto porridge and rice puddings, stirred through Eton mess, fizzed up in cocktails, spooned over pancakes and more. Without a proper name, it became Quince Thing. Today, I made Medlar Thing. It turns out to be the best thing I’ve made when the quantity of firm medlars outweigh the soft, though it would work differently well with the ratio reversed.

The first mouthful drew out those memories like a stream of roped tyres falling over the side of a boat. And that - it turns out - is what growing and cooking so often does.

Medlar Thing

Makes around 1 litre

1kg (or 1106g) medlars - some bletted, most firm
500g caster sugar
2 sheriff’s badges of star anise, broken up
juice of 1 lemon
a small knob of butter
2 tsp ground ginger

Wash the fruit and chop into quarters. Place in a large pan over high heat and pour over a litre of boiling water. Stir in the star anise. Simmer for 25-30 minutes until what looks like unappetising chestnut soup turns into an unappetising grey/brown porridge, encouraging the fruit to disintegrate with a wooden spoon from 15 minutes or so.

Allow to cool a little, then use the spoon to push the pulp - liquid too - through a sieve into a bowl. You are likely to have around 800g puree. Return this to a clean pan and add the sugar. Simmer for 20 minutes or so, stirring once in a while. Don’t worry about any froth that rises.

Turn up the temperature and boil for one minute before removing from the heat. Stir in the butter (this adds silk and dispatches the froth) and the ground ginger. Jar immediately.

²

1. I still have the plant and seed nursery, located not at the farm

2. Jane Steward of Eastgate Larder has written a really special book about medlars - more here - with some superb recipes.