Starting sometime in late March and going right through to early-mid-May around here is feijoa time. Feijoas are amongst the easiest of home orchard plants to grow, right alongside plums. When they're ripe, they fall off the tree, and until they fall off the tree they're not ripe. Commercial growing has been bedevilled by the problem of getting ripe feijoas, unbruised, into the markets with a decent shelf-life, so they tend to be expensive to buy.
But if you have small kids you can send on hands and knees under the bushes with a bucket, nothing could be simpler or more delicious to harvest in quantity.
Feijoa Pulp
When the first flush comes through, they're coming out your ears. My defensive reaction is to scoop the pulp out of a twenty litre bucketful of feijoas, apply the blender and freeze, either as ice-blocks or in yoghurt or cottage cheese containers saved for the purpose.
This is marvellous thawed and eaten for breakfast at any time of the year with yoghurt and muesli. You can also make a delicious and very delicate flavoured jam from the skinless pulp. It's also wonderful as a base for feijoa and apple crumble for a fast dessert.
If you have later jam making in mind, you can coarsely chop the feijoas, skins and all, (trim both ends first) and then apply the blender. Freeze and store in yoghurt cartons as above.
Basic Feijoa Jam
To a kilogram of pulped feijoas (with skins), add the juice of a lemon, a cup of water, and a volume of sugar equal to the volume of the other ingredients. Bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and continue stirring, once a rolling boil is reached, for some 15 minutes, by which time the jam should be passing the wrinkle test. It can take up to 25 minutes, but 15 is much more usual.
(Put a dinner plate beside the jam saucepan. With your stirring spoon, dribble a little of the cooked jam onto the surface of the plate, and allow a minute to cool. Slide your index finger into the jam on the plate. If it simply moves out of the way it needs a little more cooking. If it is done, the surface will wrinkle slightly ahead of your finger. Hold the plate up to the light for a better view.)
Pour the jam into hot sterilised jars, place sterilised lids on and leave to set. (I sterilise by putting the jars in the microwave for about 6 minutes, and placing the lids in a bowl of boiling water.) So, before the rolling boil starts, assemble the jars in the microwave and set up the timer, so all you have to do is push START about ten minutes into the rolling boil.
Feijoa and Lime Jam/Marmalade
Do exactly the same as above, but use limes and feijoas to make up the kilogram of fruit. I have made batches with 100g of limes, and with 400g limes. I imagine that mandarines or lemons would also do well, though I'd be careful with grapefruit. I slice the limes in quarters lengthwise, then crosswise into fine slices. These are added to the chopped feijoa before the blender is applied. At 100g you get a fine lift to the basic feijoa; at 400g you get a distinctive lime marmalade quality in the finished jam, without losing the feijoa flavour.
As a piece de resistance I made up a batch with 400g limes, 600g feijoas and 250g approx of Billington Plum pulp which I had plenty of in the freezer. Billingtons are a small, dark-red fleshed, intensely flavoured plum, ripening around Christmas, very easy to grow in your own garden. The resulting jam was impressive indeed.
Feijoa Chutney
Still under development..... Watch this space.
