Personally, I would include the amount of time spent in the kitchen making jam as one of the unmistakable signs that autumn is upon us. I'm surprised John Keates didn't include a line or two in his poem about boiling sugar and Kilner jars. Some years - like this one - another sign of the times is the volume of rain that descends. It seems to fall in quantities that Noah would have recognised so, perhaps, instead of wielding a heavy kitchen knife and cutting fruit, I should be busy with a saw and hammer, wood and nails and trying to remember exactly how long a cubit is supposed to be.

Quince

The word quince seems to grab the attention of a number of people. Some, like Stephen Fry, like it for its sound when spoken and for this reason Mr Fry puts it among his favourite English words. Others, such as the author Melvin Burgess, find that there is an essential social fabric requirement to having quinces around (hanging from trees in the garden, for example) and like to talk about them rather more than is common. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr Burgess has a quince app on his phone. I once did a survey of the favourite words of my students and the word marmelo was quite high on their list of Portuguese words they liked the sound of most. Obviously, this curious fruit is more important to us than some might give it credit.

My cunhado recently brought us some boxes of quinces from his in-laws farm in Trás-os-Montes and, as usual when we suddenly receive unexpected deliveries of over twenty kilos of any fruit, we look at ways to turn it into jam. The usual way that the Portuguese deal with quince is to make marmelada but, I have to admit, it is not my favourite doce and I wanted to do something different. Quince does make a superb crumble (with ginger added, and cooked in port-based, spice-laden sauce) but there is a limit to the amount of crumble anyone can consume in a short period. I turned, therefore, to Beryl Wood's wonderful little gem of a recipe book, first published in 1970, called 'Let's Preserve It'. (This book has recently and quite magically been reprinted, just in time too as my original mid-70s copy was finally turning to shreds and tatters from overuse).

Happy coincidence

In a moment of happy coincidence, the boxes of quince had been put next to a great heap of vegetable marrows in the kitchen. At this time of the year, our kitchen often resembles a Harvest Festival at an Anglican village church, but without the kindly vicar licking his fingers after scoffing the cucumber sandwiches. It seemed obvious to me to try and match the two (the quince and the marrows, you understand, not the vicar and the cucumber sandwiches). The marrows themselves were something of an accident in as much as we had thrown down the seeds from last year's bumper crop of courgettes, expecting little from them as we cast them hither and thither in a suitably old fashioned way rather than planting them properly in neat rows. Nevertheless, up they sprang. We missed the courgette stage with them for some reason and one moment they were smaller than my little finger and the next thing we knew they had taken over the corner of the field and had to be manhandled by six burly men and an ox to get them off the ground. I have a theory about cropping courgettes which involved knowing on which day of the week you planted them. If they were planted on a Wednesday then they'll have to be cropped on a Wednesday because if you leave it until the following Saturday then Wednesday's slender just-right courgette will have turned into Saturday's monster courge.

So, quince and marrow it was to be and Beryl Wood had just the recipe. I've been a big fan of the serendipity of food stuff ever since the day the chickens got out and laid eggs under the lemon tree and I suddenly remembered the delights of lemon curd and turned to Beryl to help me out on that occasion too. Anyway, the book fell open at the page for quince and marrow jam and the fruit was already sitting next to the veg and they were making eyes at each other, so who was I to ignore fate? I found a pan large enough to make soup for all the hungry people in a city full of hungry people and filled it with fruit and vegetables and sugar and heated it gently. The colour slowly changed from pale white and uncertain green to a rich yellow and finally to a warm and sumptuous orangey-red during the cooking process. Proper autumn colours. Pity about the rain, but the ark will just have to wait.

Fitch O'Connell's new novel, Still Yesterday is now available from Amazon in Kindle format or paperback, or by following this link.

Author

Fitch is a retired teacher trainer and academic writer who has lived in northern Portugal for over 30 years. Author of 'Rice & Chips', irreverent glimpses into Portugal, and other books.

Fitch O'Connell