QUINCE JAM (MRABA SAFARJAL)

Recipe By Hadias Cuisine

Are you looking for a simple jam recipe? Look no further! The smell of jam fills the air!! We just came back from a visit to Beirut and Paris. We spent some family time together with my mom and my in-laws! While we were there, mama made quince jam, using the wonderful smelling fruit sitting in her kitchen basket! Mom is widely creative and passionate about her jams! One of the most pleasurable moments for me is to look through her old torn sheet recipes and her old cooking magazines! I don’t know why !! Maybe this brings back fond memories of the dishes we enjoyed as children.

Quinces, a distant relative to apples and pears, make a wonderful, spreadable sticky jam.- though more mouth-puckering when eaten raw. The fruit is native to Lebanon, Iran, Turkey and Greece and a familiar tree throughout the Middle East; quince produces a natural pectin when cooked. The jam is flavored with mastic gum that adds a wonderful dimension.

Quince is  so good for you, here is an article about the health benefits of this underrated fruit from The Organic Facts and why you should include it more in your diet!

The good thing here is that the jam does not require food coloring or even pectin. The flesh of the fruit is beige in color when cut raw that naturally turns to red when cooked.

Have you ever thought of pairing mastic gum with jams? Yes, mastic goes enticingly well with jams, and here is a good example for that!

The jam is great with Arabic bread, toasts, scones or French baguette, crackers or just straight out of the jar! Em! Yes I do that!! Happy eating

The jam is made up of equal weights of fruits and sugar.

Store the jam in sterilized glass jars

Ingredients 

1 kg /2 lb 4 oz. quince, leave the peel on
1 kg / 2lb. 4 oz. sugar
¼ teaspoon citric acid (hamod allaymoun) or ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
8 mastic gum pods crushed with a pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice to be added at the end of cooking

Directions:

 Wash and pat dry the quinces
Cut each in half, core and grate using a grater with large holes. Toss with sugar and let them sit overnight in the fridge.
Transfer the quince-sugar mixture to a heavy bottomed saucepan, add the citric acid or the lemon juice and bring to a boil, reduce heat to low.
Cook for 11/2 hours uncovered, stirring every now and then and make sure heat is reduced to low.You will notice the quince starts to turn pink-red and thickens a bit (I like mine well clotted)
Crush the mastic gum with a pinch of sugar and add to the jam; add an additional tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, stir well. Remove from heat and set aside to completely cool down before transferring to sterilized jars.  Refigerate and it will keep up to 1 year