It was another quiet day yesterday here at Struan Farm, as the quince crop landed in a big way, along with an announcement that several people and their whanau are in self-isolation in nearby Te Kuiti, with coronavirus test results pending. There are Golden Queen peaches still, too.
I decided to browse through a number of cookbooks from my pantry shelves. In an effort to evolve from my usual but limited repertoire given the quantity of quince this year.
My experiments for the day were "Quince Butter" from Sophie Hansen's "A Basket by the Door," and "Poached Quince" from Tessa Kiros' book "Falling Cloudberries." The latter was bequeathed to me by my friend Glen when I last visited her, she had a bit of a book clean out with her recent move from Doone Cottage into town. I can tell she used this book quite a bit, it's been much loved!
It takes hours to work with quince, but they magically transform into melting, fragrant deliciousness when cooked.
For both recipes the fruit is peeled, cored and quartered. For the poached quince it's put into a boiling syrup of caster sugar, water, lemon juice and lemon peel for two hours, covered. The water is topped up as needed, since some syrup is required to serve (with ice cream or yogurt). For the quince butter sliced fruit is put into a deep roasting pan with the cores wrapped in muslin, and drizzled with a syrup of sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice and vanilla paste. The pan is then wrapped tightly with foil and left at 150C for 3-4 hours. After this the cooked fruit is processed when cool. The pureed fruit is then put back into the roasting pan to bake for one hour before then put into jars and sealed.
Yes, a five hour+ exercise. I started to worry that perhaps dinner last night might be a bit late!
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