Quinces

We have had a quince tree in our garden for 20 or so years. It is planted against 6 ft high wall, has white, a little pinkish, flowers in profusion in spring. Each flower is 2 inches across and, each autumn, it has a huge crop of fruit. Two months ago, the tree keeled over so that the trunk was nearly horizontal.  On investigation, the tree had come away from the wall because all the ties had rusted through but most of its roots were still intact and so I took a command decision, to leave it as it was until the fruit ripened in November. I stripped the fruit from the tree ten days ago and the gardener cut back the top growth , upended the tree and strapped it more securely to the wall, using nylon rope. It had not even dropped any leaves since it fell over so I am hoping that it will be okay next year. It has been given buckets and buckets of home made compost and rotted leaves just to show I love it still.

The picture shows a few fruit on their way from the garage to the kitchen. I do give away a lot of fruit but even so, each quince weighs in at about a pound and there is a limit to the amount of quince jelly we want and friends we have!. So I have two recipes which work well.

The first is a lamb tajine where you add fried slices of quince twenty minutes before the end of cookling. 2 quinces for 4 people. This is also a good trick with a guinea fowl casserole.

But the best recipe is slightly startling.

Turn on the oven to 180 degrees. Take 2 quinces, wash to get rid of the indumentum on the skin, remove the hard core and slice up. Put the slices into a casserole dish, add 3 heaped tablespoonfuls of sugar and spread over the slices, pour over 200 ml of whipping or double cream. Put in the oven for 50-60 minutes. This is really too much for two people but okay for three. Mean for four.

Two extra points
1) if the quince has mottled brownish flesh, don't worry, it has not gone bad. If it is soft and thoroughly brown, throw it out.
2) don't even think of using any milk or single cream, it curdles and is horrid.


I got up early this morning and woven another piece of double stitched cloth. I have two more to go.