Two years ago, I wrote about making ratafia with loquats from one of my trees.

That particular tree succumbed to fire blight last year but I was looking forward to making another batch of ratafia with fruit from the loquat tree at the back of the house.

I noticed fire blight on the remaining loquat about a week ago and, after reading up on it, the Spouse and I got right on it. Alas, when he went up on the roof to take care of the obviously dead branches, he reported that ALL of the branches were infected. The best laid plans and all that…

All the branches had to come down (we’ve left the trunk as it should put some new branches out eventually and some copper-based treatments should take care of the fire blight…I hope!) and so I was out in the back, harvesting the not-yet-ripe loquats.

I decided that I would try making verjuice (or verjus, if you’re in a Gallic state of mind) with the fruit. BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme had done an episode on verjuice and it seemed like a very interesting sort of foodstuff.

I quartered and seeded the entire haul of loquats (somewhere between five and ten pounds) and then ran them through the food processor, creating a pulp.

The pulp sat in a cheesecloth-lined colander (weighted) overnight in order to collect the juice itself. If I’d had a better press set up, I could have got much more liquid out of the mash but as it was, I ended up with almost a litre. Salt was added, to prevent any chance of fermentation, and into the fridge it went.

I left it in its initial container for a week, just to be sure that it wasn’t going to start fermenting. It’s quite salty (no, I didn’t measure the salt but obviously I put a wee bit too much in!) so I felt safe in transferring it to glass today.

The verjuice looks and smells quite a bit like unfiltered apple juice; not surprisingly, I’m sure, as the loquat is related to the apple. I’m quite looking forward to using it (judiciously!) as a deglazing liquid this winter.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Food, glorious food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.