I wasn't sure about quinces. With their pretty pale yellow hue and bulbous prehistoric form, they always seemed more ornamental than edible. Don't get me wrong - quince paste is just about my favourite thing on earth with a slice of cheese, however when you can buy a slab of that cheaply at your local deli, there's not much incentive to make it yourself. But I had a quince evangelist staying with me on and off for the last five weeks and - hailing from the northern hemisphere (by way of Newcastle, Australia) - she was keen to soak up as much autumnal fruit as she could before returning to summer. And soak she did, submerging fat slices of fruit in sugar syrup and baking them slowly til they turned ruby red and my apartment was filled with the fragrance of vanilla. One night I tried some for dessert. They were sweet, silky and swimming in the sticky scarlet syrup of their juices. I was sold.
Let me start by
saying that quinces are no fun at all to peel. Their irregular shape
with all its crazy contours makes a simple task utterly frustrating. What's more, in its uncooked state, the fruit is rock hard so if you can imagine coring a rock, well, you will appreciate that the next step isn't any easier. But once that's done, so is all the hard work. After that it's just a matter of slicing them up, tossing them into an oven-proof casserole with the other ingredients, putting the lid on and sliding the whole thing into the oven. My houseguest is gone now, departed early Monday morning on a flight bound for SeaTac. The last thing she ate before heading to the airport was a single slice of poached quince, leaving me with a Tupperware container full of sweet poached fruit with which to remember her... and autumn too.
