They dined on Mince and slices of Quince.

We have dined on mince and slices of quince - albeit in separate dishes, though I'm sure I heard Greg Wallace say something about smoked bacon and quince on Masterchef last night.

For the last few days I've been steadily working my way through the Norfolk Kitchen Quince Mountain. I avoided Membrillo and Jelly this year as we've had lots of those in previous years thanks to the old Japonica Quince, instead I've made the most of the quince flesh in crumbles, cakes etc as that was difficult to do with the tiny Japonicas. Quince upside down cake was a great success, pieces of pre-cooked quince in the bottom of a cake tin with a standard 3 egg sponge mix poured on top and baked at gm4 for about 45 minutes. The secret ingredient is a couple of tablespoons of rose water added to the sponge mix, along with the usual vanilla extract.

Quince Mincemeat also worked well. I took Delia's mincemeat method as a base and came up with this mixture from bits we already had in the cupboard:

225g Quince (chopped into small pieces and poached til soft)

110g suet (I used vegetarian)

400g chopped dates

110g mixed candied peel

175g brown sugar

zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

25g chopped walnuts

2 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2tsp ground cinnamon

a few gratings of fresh nutmeg

Generous amount of Cointreau (because it was already in the house, brandy is in the original recipe) - probably a double measure.

The method is really easy. Mix everything together except the alcohol and put into a covered dish in a very, very low oven for 3 hours. Take it out and stir a few times as it cools to distribute the fat, add the alcohol when it's completely cool. Pot up into sterilised jars in the usual fashion. Delia says this methods prevents the fresh fruit juice seeping out and fermenting as it seals the pieces with fat. I can vouch for it working as I used this method last year and the mincemeat was still fine 9 months after it was made. I tasted it last night and it's really very good, even before it's matured.

I also made Quince Chutney from Pam Corbain's River Cottage Preserves book.

1kig pumpkin, peeled, seeded and diced

1kg quince, peeled, cored and diced

500g cooking/wild apples, peeled, cored and diced

500g red onions, diced

500g raisins

50g fresh ginger (fresh horseradish in the original recipe but I couldn't get hold of any)

500g brown sugar

600ml cider vinegar

Spice bag

2tsp peppercorns

12 cloves

2 cinnamon sticks.

You probably know the drill. Mix everything together, bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and simmer for ages til it looks like chutney. Then pot it into sterilised jars etc makes about 10 jars.

Other than these 2 recipes, I've been freezing the quinces. I find it easier to boil the quince whole for roughly an hour or so til they're soft then let them cool completely. Once they're soft, they're much easier to chop neatly, I then pack them into foil trays and stack them in the chest freezer.

I think I'm coming to the end although I may bottle a few in spiced cider or something similar as a change from the plain, frozen ones. I still have masses of the pesky things left so I may begin to distribute them to friends and family - whether they want them or not!

(By the way, did you know that a 'Runicble Spoon' is actually a spork?)

Chutney Bread and other adventures.

Hmmm. Undecided. I experimented with chutney bread today. I found a recipe for piccalilli bread but it's obviously a heinous crime in this house to be caught with shop bought preserves so I decided to make it with my gooseberry chutney instead. I made it in the breadmaker, standard 2lb loaf with with half and half stoneground, wholemeal flour and normal strong, white bread flour plus 4tbsp chutney. The resulting bread is nice but not obviously chutney bread, if you see what I mean. It has a dark, sweet, chewy flavour vaguely similar to a wholemeal loaf I used to buy made with treacle. I think I'll try it with a stilton ploughman's and a glass of port before passing my final verdict. (by the way, I only recently discovered port, why did no-one tell me it's not like sherry at all?)

Elsewhere in the kitchen I've been teaching Willow and Xanthe to make crumble (pictured) I was sent a bag of quinces by a very kind friend and we made spiced quince crumble (chucked a couple of cloves into the water when simmering the quinces and added ground cinnamon and allspice to the cooked fruit) which was delicious. Since the arrival of half a dead sheep at our house I have the luxury of a chest freezer so as we are already stuffed to the gunnels with preserved quince in numerous forms I decided to just plain old freeze the remainder.

It struck me that I'm actually quite fortunate to have got by with only a small freezer until now. What with necessity being the mother of invention and all that, it's forced me to get creative on the preserve front. If I'd started out with a chest freezer, it would have been very easy to just throw bagfuls of wild fruit in there and just use them as they are but as it is I now have an array of 'new' products like ketchups, cordials and bottled frui to use. Next time I make quince crumble I'm going to add in some of my pears bottled in mulled cider, much more interesting than just plain old poached pear.

Lovely Quince Tree: A Valediction

I've written about the perilous state of our local Japonica Quince previously. I had been clinging to the hope that it might survive but Adam and I are increasingly pessimistic. It still looks green and healthy, just rather, ummm, broken. I fear over zealous local authority bureaucracy is it's greatest threat at the moment as it's lying on the floor in an untidy fashion and the official grass cutter men can't get underneath it anymore. My widow's weeds are on order.

The tree has a special place in our family history of foraging as Willow spotted it about a year ago when she was 4. Adam and I had seen it but dismissed it as a crab apple due to it's tiny fruit, it was Willow who frogmarched us over and made us begin our Google odyssey to eventual identification (and she hasn't let us forget it). The fruit tastes and cooks exactly like the full sized quince but has the added inconvenience of it's size (roughly golfball) which makes peeling time consuming and fiddly.

I can freely admit we're in a slight panic at the prospect of no more free quinces so we have methodically stripped as much fruit as we can handle and I've been trying to keep a pile of slowing bletting quince under control. At least the kitchen smells good. So far I've made 2 batches of membrillo, 2 of quince jelly, 3 jars bottled quince, 2 batches crystalised quince and Adam has embarked on quince cider (if it's any good I'll blog the recipe).

In my previous Membrillo post I was pondering the cause of it's dark orange colour, I'm now reasonably confident my theory about small bits of skin passing through the moulis holds water. Take a look at the jewel bright colour of the bottled quince which are peeled prior to processing. I'm very tempted to make a 3rd batch of membrillo using peeled quince to see if I can get the colour right but that feels excessive even to me and the peeling feels like a faff too far.

Here's the recipe I use for bottling quince, don't be alarmed by the vinegar, you can't taste it in the final product, it just gives an almost alcoholic depth to the flavour. This is excellent warm over good vanilla ice cream.

Bottled Quince
2.5kg quince (peeled weight)
625g sugar
190 ml white wine or cider vinegar

Put the sugar and vinegar into a pan and heat til the sugar has dissolves. Add the quince, cover and simmer until the fruit turns bright red, this will probably take 2 or 3 hours and doesn't work in a slow cooker by the way.

It can be eaten at this stage and will keep in the fridge for some time. To give it a longer shelf life it can be bottled. I use 1l mason jars. Pack the quince into sterilised jars, bring the syrup in the pan to the boil and pour over leaving about an inch head room at the top of the jar. Screw the lids on and loosen a quarter turn. Put into the oven at gm 2 for an hour. Take out of the oven one at a time and tighten the lid. Leave to cool for 24hrs then test the seal (in my jars this means the lid becomes convex and won't flex when pushed)

Makes 2 1l jars.

Anyway, *sniff* Farewell lovely Quince tree (dabs eyes with black edged hanky), I dread the day my blue cheese will go unadorned. (draws black veil over face)

Cheese, Paste or Membrillo?

I dunno, Quince Paste, Quince Cheese, neither sounds particularly appetising to me but then 'Membrillo' it's a bit foreign and poncy isn't it? Still, a rose by any other name etc. Personally, I love Membrillo with blue cheese, it's also good as a cake filling as it's thick so doesn't soak into the sponge and stands up quite well.

We're lucky enough to have a Japonica Quince growing wild nearby, we discovered it last year so this is our second season of membrillo and bottled quince though, sadly, it may be our last. The tree grew at a 45 degree angle and this year it's been a victim of it's own success. I described it as 'groaning' with fruit without realising that was literally true, I had a shock last week when I discovered it had fallen flat to the floor. The trunk isn't snapped all the way through so maybe it can survive but my main worry is that it grows on council owned open ground and I have a feeling that elf and safety or tidy mindedness may strike and it'll be chopped right down.

As a result I've gone on a mad quince picking session so I can make the most of (probably) the last season. I'm on my second batch of membrillo. I experimented with the first by adding some allspice, cinnamon and whisky it tastes like Christmas but unfortunately the colour has changed and it looks, quite literally, like jarred mud! My plan is to use it to make some festive jam tarts closer to Christmas with a star shaped lid to disguise the colour and palm them off *cough* I mean generously donate them to the school Fayre.

I then made a second batch in the usual way. For me that means simmering the quince for aaaages until they're pink and soft, then roughly mashing with a potato masher before passing them through a moulis to remove the skins and pips (sick of the sight of that flippin' moulis to tell the truth) I do it this way because the Japonicas are tiny and fiddly to peel and chop, unlike the larger varieties. I put the pulp in my conveniently calibrated jam pan and add an equal volume of sugar. I then boil it til it's very thick and pot up in the usual sterilised jars.

I have to admit though, my Membrillo isn't the most professional you'll ever see. It's a kind of burnt orange colour rather than the glowing, jewel red it should really be. I'm not quite sure why this is, maybe it's the Japonicas or maybe my moulis method.

A true Membrillo should also be capable of being turned out of it's pot and sliced, whereas mine is more of a spoonable consistency, I guess a fruit butter rather than an actual cheese, but this bit is a deliberate decision. Cooking the quince/sugar mixture to the correct thickness is a hazardous, traumatic event involving hot, spitting, boiling sugar flying wildly all around the kitchen, followed by weeks of slowly chipping rock hard splodges of cold Membrillo off floors, walls, cooker tops and ceilings. I decided I could live with spoonable!