Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Poached Quince


I sometimes wonder how people figured out that you could eat various items of food.  I mean who first decided to separate eggs and find out that you can whip egg whites till they become stiff?  What about plants like taro that are toxic when raw?  Who thought "lets just cook this poisonous plant to see if we can eat it then" - and who tried the cooked stuff first?  And who was it upon finding a rock hard, misshapen quince thought, if I cook this for several hours it will become delicious?

Well I think in all these cases we can thank those pioneering first cooks and even more to the taste testers who they employed, because the results have been used to wonderful effect by cooks over the years since.

I have been hearing about the wonder that is a quince for quite some time now.  While I was familiar with quince paste as an ideal cheese accompaniment, I hadn't tried the fresh fruit.  They have a limited season, so I was very pleased to actually remember them when I was at the green grocers.  Quince are not the prettiest of fruit.  Craggy would be a good description.  And the white flesh discolours almost instantly when exposed to air.  But after several hours poaching they turn the most gorgeous dark pink colour and the hard - I mean be careful not to cut yourself with the kitchen knife hard - flesh becomes soft and tender.  It really is an amazing transformation.


I poached 3 quince, by making a poaching liquid of a litre of water, a cup of sugar, a vanilla bean and a pinch of cloves.  The quinces I peeled under running water, then cut into 8ths and cored.  I simply popped them in the boiling liquid, turned it down to a gentle simmer and left them alone for 2 hours.

I've had some warm with ice-cream, but have mainly been enjoying them with my museli and yoghurt or porridge for breakfast.  They went particularly well with porridge - just a sprinkle of cinnamon and no sweetener other than the fruit was perfect.  Faux Fuchsia has a wonderful sounding cake made with them over on her blog.

I have to say, I'm not 100% convinced that the quince can replace rhubarb compote in my mind as my preferred cooked fruit, but then again, I'm not that keen on cloves so I might try the recipe again leaving them out.  Still they are a very yummy addition to my breakfast and they are just so pretty.  Plus they keep in the fridge just fine for at least a week and you can freeze them no problems which does make them rather ideal for cooking up in big batches.

Have you tried quince and what did you think?


8 comments:

  1. I quite often wonder the same thing with the likes of bread and cakes - who decided to grind a grain to make flour, who decided to skim cream off milk and then whip it into butter, who decided to try to mix these ingredients together and cook them, who decided that adding yeast was a good idea ... etc, etc, etc - so many different components go into things that we take for granted and yet someone at some stage has done some mighty experimentation to get it right!

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    1. Yes I find people coming up with the science of cooking amazing. Combining flavours isn't that hard but making a cake rise, I take my hat off to those innovative bakers.

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  2. My parents' house is currently chockers with poached and baked quince. Both fridges and freezers in the real and garage fridge are full, and dad keeps trying to give tubs to anyone and everyone :P In truth, they've never been my favourite fruit, but I never say no to free food. Lovely with yoghurt and granola!

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    1. Wow! I'm guessing your parents have a quince tree? I think next up I might try some kind of cake. I can imagine that works well.

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  3. I sometimes get stuck on that line of thinking too and I generally give up on it as all too hard! You're right - how did we ever figure all of these things out?! It's fortunate for us they were figured out, though, especially when the result is quince prepared like this.

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    1. Kari I think we can thank a lot of clever people - and brave people who were prepared to taste the results!

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  4. Haha! I have the same thoughts too. And also, how many people were horribly sick etc to find out that some foods are inedible?!

    I've never tried quince before, except for the paste. I keep seeing it pop up on recipes and blogs that I feel compelled to try it!

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    1. It was the blogosphere raving that got me on to quince, I totally recommend giving it a try Cat.

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