From the Archives: Loquat Leather

loquatleather

Judging from the reaction to Mrs. Homegrown’s post yesterday it looks like some folks have a loquat obsession. Welcome home brothers and sisters.

At the risk of tooting my own loquat horn and repeating an old blog post, Mrs. H neglected to mention my controversial 2012 loquat leather experiment and recipe. You’ve still got to de-seed the damn things but at least there’s no need to skin them. Plus it makes use of booze.

I’ll admit it’s not a thrilling fruit leather but it’s not too bad.

Mrs. Homegrown chimes in:

My philosophy is simply that if one is going to go through the trouble of making fruit leather, preserves, pies etc., one should use outstanding fruit. The flavor tells in the end. After all, the starving times are not upon us. Even Erik can’t get super excited about this fruit leather–as I recall it tasted mostly of lemon and booze.

Then again, some people may have outstanding loquats–it sounds so from the comments on the last post. The ones we have access to just aren’t fantastic for preserving–too watery, too light. I just learned that there are over 800 cultivars of loquats, so there’s going to be lots of different loquat experiences.

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10 Comments

  1. LOL, maybe it’s time to start a blog just about loquats, with an annual countdown to loquat season.

    Could also be amazing to have a page with pictures of people’s ad-hoc harvesting techniques. My current favorite: I stand under the tree, my kid stands on my shoulders and uses the scooter handles to pull down the branches while I try to catch whatever’s underneath in a backpack.

    We eat them straight up– it’s a visceral delight. At the end we have a huge midden heap of skins and seeds. This is eating at it’s best, and it would be a HUGE p in the a to do more than this with them.

    • Sorry, I put this comment on the wrong page – please ignore.
      (I had your two loquat posts open at the same time,
      and got confused)

    • Hey, don’t apologize==this is good info! I accidentally deleted the matching comment on the other post, but have restored it. I mistook it for an accidental duplicate, which happens fairly often.

  2. The best loquat tree ever, in the world, was removed from my wife’s cousin’s house. Really. I tried to root about 20 cuttings, and they got nodules like they were going to root, and kept the leaves for almost two months, but nothing ever happened. I tried grafting it onto another loquat, and a quince, but had no luck. I pleaded with the owner (Cousin’s husband), but he had it in his head to get rid of it…I was actually depressed for a while. I had never had a loquat like it, and I’ve had a lot of loquats. It had a “Big Jim” size, but a flavor that far surpassed any big Jim i’ve ever tried. I lament the loss. Alas, There are supposedly a few seedless varieties floating around Japan. Someone should focus on getting them here!!!

    • Yes, a seedless loquat would be great.
      I am a fan of seedless fruit trees in general, though some people don’t like the idea, I gather.
      I imagine of all the plant energy and nutrient that goes into making the seed pit, and it is just discarded.

      Pity you lost the tree you liked so much.
      I think aerial layering is a good method of propagating woody plants that are difficult from normal cuttings.
      Where you half cut through a branch and let the roots form in a suitable medium, before detaching from the parent tree.

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