The internet has all but eliminated the need to purchase hard copy magazines but I love to browse the pages of cooking magazines, even old ones, so I never throw away the few I’ve
bought in airports and at supermarket checkouts. I have maybe 15 old mags here with me in Israel, mostly Cooking Light and Bon Appetite.
Last week while leafing through a Cooking Light which I had carried with me on my aliyah trip in the fall of 2005, I found an interesting article about quinces (Cydonia oblonga). Reading the article, I realized that I had missed the quince season which runs from September to December but hoped, since it is was only the first week of January that I might find a few quinces in Machane Yehudah, the Shuk, when Edwin and I made our weekly Friday morning trip there.
Sure enough I found a few lonesome quinces at one of the booths where I
often find special and exotic fruit.
Chabushim (Quinces)
The history of quinces is interesting and there’s lots written on-line but, in short, the quince is a very old fruit (it predates the apple) and perhaps originated in Mesopotamia. Some have even credited the quince with being the Garden of Eden’s forbidden fruit. If you’ve ever tried to cut, much less eat a raw quince you’d find this credit hard to swallow. The fruit is as hard as a rock and the taste too bitter to eat raw. However, it has a wonderful floral, bright aroma. There’s nothing like it.
Edwin came in handy (as usual!) because the shop keepers in the Shuk didn’t know the fruit by its English name and I had no idea how it is called in Hebrew. Apparently the fruit is referred to in Sephardic poetry and Edwin had come across the Portuguese name marmelo in his work. (Incidentally marmalade comes from the word marmelo and it is thought that the Portuguese made marmalade from quinces long before the Scots made it from oranges.) Because Edwin needed to translate the word into Hebrew, he knew its Hebrew name chabush.
Chabush is easy to remember because one of my favorite cantors is Moshe Chabusha. I never knew his last name was Quince! To hear Chabusha sing an Uum
Kulthum song chick here .
Yair Harel (percussionist), Edwin, Hazzan Moshe Chabusha in Ghent, Belgium
Chabusha is also an excellent oud (Arabic lute) player and violinist. You may notice that he plays both left handed. Click here to hear.
Each spring we make the trek down to Beit Knesset Har Zion located just outside the wall of the Old City at David’s tomb to hear Chabusha sing a chapter of Pirkei Avot [Chapters (Teachings) of the Fathers]. These amazing chapters of wisdom are recited between Pesach and Shavuot in the Sephardic tradition. There are six chapters and one is done each Shabbat between the two festivals. Here’s a link to read more about that: http://www.hillel.org/jewish/textstudies/pirkei_avot/default.
Back to quinces or chabushim (pl. for chabush): For Shabbat lunch I decided to make a Moroccan lamb stew topped off with a sambal which included poached chabushim. The stew simmered all Friday afternoon and the delicious aroma of cardamom and coriander filled the house. The recipe is in the Oct 2005 issue of Cooking Light. You can find it at epicurious.com by clicking here.
I had some left over poached chabushim and the poaching liquid so I made a quince “butter” which we paired up with some cheeses and baguette that we had bought at Basher Fromagerie an extraordinary gourmet cheese market in the Shuk. A glass of Yarden white wine completed our motzai Shabbat repast.
The chabushim season may be over but the celeriac is delicious right now and abundantly available at the Shuk. We started our Erev Shabbat fish dinner with Celery Root Bisque with shallots and fresh thyme.
The soup, stew and the preserves were Shabbat highlights. Hope you can
join us for Shabbat soon.
