The last few weeks have been crazy at work. I have been spending the last few days going through massive spreasheets where if I get my analysis wrong there could be some dire consequences. So I have not got round to using the quinces I bought in the Netherlands.
I have found plenty of recipes on the internet and had excellent advice from copdam and technomist on this blog. However, I decided to focus on a recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Year. The reason was it seemed to be a means of coming up with quince cheese or membrillo which could be highly useful when we get a large number of guests for Christmas from the Netherlands. It also seemed simpler than some of the other recipes.
It starts with 1 kg sugar - well that's easy as it's a single bag! 0.75 litre of water and a kilogram of quinces. It is not clear whether this is before or after peeling so I took the former; my quinces weighed exactly 995g on my scales.
So I peeled and cored the quinces to reveal their white flesh. Then grated them in my food processor and added them to the syrup.
As expected they look white in the first five minutes, but gradually take on a redder hue with cooking.
After an hour they are having a pinky-orangey hue. The recipe said that by now there should be a grainy paste, but obviously I was some way away from that. I succumbed to the mechanical help of my hand mixer.
By now we were at the deeper colour I remember from when my mother-in-law stewed quinces for meat dishes. By this time you are probably wondering why my camera tripod has been gathering dust in the attic too....
When I started to let the mix cool I thought it had a fighting chance of setting before putting it into the oven. However, since I want to avoid failure I have taken technomist's advice on using lemon juice and used juice of half a lemon.
In a few hours I will know whether this will set or be another of Oregano's doomed experiments!
2007-11-10 @ 00:57