Poached Quince with Spices - A Guest Post by Anh of Anh's Food Blog

 

I'm struggling to put my mind on studying as chocolate craving seems to to touch the sky a few days before the exams. I start the morning by snacking on bitter chocolate chips and a piece (or pieces) of dark chocolate during the day. And I can't seem to go to bed without having a spoonful of nutella. I know! Please send help!


Apart from chocolate, another addiction I'm finding hard to get off is Twitter.  But I'm not complaining, since it has also connected me to some fabulous people around the globe. One of those friends being Anh from Anh's Food Blog.

To start with, we have a lot in common, being a student, having a full time job and top it with our love for all things food, we have things to talk about all the time. Her blog is full of beautiful pictures and recipes particularly Vietnamese recipes that always leaves me hungry! I'm so glad she is on Journey Kitchen and bringing us this fabulous recipe of quince (I'm on a lookout to find them in Kuwait)  all the way from Melbourne.

I feel so honoured to be invited as a guest blogger in Journey Kitchen. For a while now, Kulsum and I have been connected via our blogs, then twitter and occasionally Facebook. I think we “chat” with each other almost everyday, and she’s become a good friend of mine although we have never met! Friendship like this is the aspect of food blogging I treasure the most, and it’s truly a blessing.

We “talk” about different aspects in our lives and our daily happenings. Often or not, the weather topic pops up and this is where we often realise how far apart we are physically. At the moment in my world we have rain, lots of it. The air is crisp and the temperature has dropped. We are moving towards the end of autumn and a long winter is ahead of us. But in her world, it is hot, hot, hot. I have never been to that part of the globe, so I can only imagine how the weather would be like…

So for this post, I thought I should bring something seasonal from the land of down under and share with everyone. Quince it is.

We have quite a lot of supplies of quince recently in the market. It is a lovely cold weather fruit, and a strange one I may add. Quinces tend to be cooked, but even in the raw form, it has a beautiful fragrance that I identify as “autumn” smell. It’s pleasantly fresh, fruity with an aroma of spice here or there. The fragrance is even better when the fruits are slowly poached with sugar syrup and spices. Your kitchen will be filled with the most gorgeous scent. Just perfect.  

Slowly poaching quince for long hours will yield really nice results. The fruits will turn to a deep red color. However, I haven’t had much time or patience to wait these days, so I simply poach quince until soft. Poached quinces are lovely in cakes, tarts or simply with a serving of yoghurt and toasted granola in the morning.

Oh, I also add in some fresh lemon verbena from times to time to my breakfast. They are thriving in the herb pot outside, in the backyard…

Poached quince with spices

There’s no real recipe but here is what I did with my quinces.

Prepare a large bowl of water and squeeze in the juice of one lemon.

Wash the quinces thoroughly. Peel the skin, quarter the fruit, take the seed out and submerge the quinces into the acidulated water to prevent it from turning brown. Collect the peel and put into a muslin bag (the skin of the fruit is where the fragrance comes from).

Now put quince in a large pot together with the muslin bag of peel, 1-2 pieces of cinnamon stick and 1 clove (or whichever spices you like) and zest of one lemon. Pour in enough simple syrup (*) to just cover the fruits. Place a piece of baking paper over the surface of the fruit/syrup to make sure your fruit will be poached properly.

Bring the syrup to the boil, and then simmer slowly until the fruit is tender. (1-2 hours).

Cool down, and enjoy your delicious poached quince!

(*) simple syrup = water and sugar of 50:50 ratio. Boil the mixture until the sugar is dissolved. I sometimes add some lemon juice to cut back the sweetness or even reduce the amount of sugar.