Last year, our neighbour Nettie gave us a huge bag of Quince. I don’t know if you’ve ever had Quince? You can’t eat them raw – they will rip the inside of your mouth out with sourness. They look a bit like apples – big, yellow, lumpy apples – and they smell sweet and almost clove-y as they ripen.
They make the most beautiful garnet-coloured jelly (which we have with lamb), and I did just that, but there were a lot of them, so I poached them and put them in the freezer – and promptly forgot about them. Then yesterday my new blogging friend Celia who is a New Zealander married to an American now living on a wee farm not far from Chicago – blogged about making a classic Kiwi favourite pudding called apple crumble. It sounded so good – you can read about her version here – and her blog is wonderful too: http://thekitchensgarden.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/undressed-apple-crumble-in-a-jar/. She reminded me, not only of the pud itself, but that I had apple in the freezer that needed to be eaten – and in looking for the apple, I found the quince too…
So I made this:
I didn’t use Celia’s recipe – it seems each family has their own – and I needed to make it gluten-free anyway… so, I just used a gluten-free flour mix for the crumble part:
4 parts flour, 2 parts sugar (I used brown sugar), 2 parts butter and a goodly amount of ground cinnamon and ground cloves. You rub the butter into the other ingredients until it gets a bit like breadcrumbs… gluten-free flour feels very squeaky when you do this – a sensation I did not like (a bit like finger-nails down a blackboard!) The crumble didn’t get golden – gluten-free flours don’t, but I could have used ground almonds instead of flour (then you have to watch it closely because almonds burn quickly)
The star of this pud is the poached quince:
2 1/2 cups red wine 50g sugar 6 whole cloves 3 long strips lemon zest (or orange) 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon (or use cinnamon sticks) 1kg quince – peeled, halved, cored and cut into 1/2 inch slicesBring the wine, sugar, cloves, zest and cinnamon to the boil in a medium saucepan and simmer until reduced to 2 cups of syrup. Add the quince slices, cover and cook over a medium heat until tender [this will take about 2 hours, quinces are tough old things], don’t stir it – you don’t want the quinces to break up – just push the slices under the syrup from time to time.
Carefully strain the quince – discard the peel and spices, but keep the syrup. Return the syrup to a pan and boil it to reduce by at least a half. Pour the reduced syrup over the quince slices.
I promise you, this is worth the phaffing round you do in the peeling/slicing stages – not only does your kitchen smell like heaven while you are poaching them – it smells gorgeous again once you turn it into something else…. pie, crumble – it would be wonderful naked, with custard… the QUINCE naked – NOT YOU!
We had it warm with a drizzle of cream last night… there is no ice-cream in this house at the moment. I had some cold this morning for breakfast – still good π Thanks Celia – I was right – Rick loves you XO
Oh I don’t know … naked consumption of quince and custard could lead to some interesting developments.
Ahem. Quinces, eh? There’s a blast of the past. I haven’t seen them since my childhood. My mum used to make fabulous quince jam. I loved the unique almost gritty texture it had.
Haha! π
Fantastic recipe Janet and thank you so much for the mention. We used to have a quince tree when we were kids in HB, NZ, Dad made quince jelly, I can still remember it. But your quince crumble with those poached quinces.. well.. that sounds luxurious. You know, I love food that takes time to cook, like the long poaching of the quinces. It gives you time to love the food, and nourish the food instead of slapping it about and gobbling it down – standing up. I am guilty of this.. ! have a great afternoon.. c
Nettie’s tree is very small – it doesn’t look strong enough to bear the weight of its fruit, but it is prolific! If I had dreamed we would be here 26 years, I would have planted one in our garden (though we can actually buy quince now that they are fashionable again!) I love taking time over food too XO
Janet – I have never had Qunice before – but this sounds wonderful. Any kind of crumble has me nailed! I think the jelly would be fabulous too, especially with roasted Lamb…yummm!
I have never even tasted quince but now I want to…and I adore crumbles of any kind.
Every time I read your blog, I drool. XXOO
You are very good for my fragile ego! XXXOOO π
I love crumbles and pan dowdy’s; but have never even tasted a quince. Perhaps now I’ll pick one up when next I see one.
I’m with Judith – one should savour all naked delights π
My dad planted a quince tree once many years ago and yes, ripping the inside of your mouth out is a perfect description.
I so love quinces, they are wonderful aren’t they!
I do prefer to eat my food at least semi-dressed, unless perhaps it’s strawberries dipped in chocolate! π
I adore quinces, but they’re so hard to get hold of these days. I’ve been lucky occasionally and scrumped some from a neighbour but I don’t think I’ll be quite so lucky again (new less friendly neighbour!) The main trouble with quince is that it needs loads of sugar (or for my palate to completely re-jig itself).
I like Stephanie Alexander’s method for oven-poaching the quince (with clotted cream or vanilla ice-cream for non-primal folks) and they’re also quite good tossed into a very long cooking tagine…