‘pickled quinces’ - a Diana Henry recipe
On the way home from our very recent stay in Norfolk we reached the Kings Lynn road and headed east in the wrong direction. Only for a mile. We had promised ourselves a visit to Back To The Garden - Farm Shop to grab as much of their bounty as we could before leaving the county.
A pre-planned purchase of enough of Mrs Temple’s Wells Alpine cheese to cook Richard Bainbridge’s lovely ‘Alpine cheese soup’ proved successful. And then, amidst the crates of seductive fruit and vegetable produce, were these pale and exceedingly interesting quinces. I’m not sure that this fruit will make Diana Henry spring to your mind but my thoughts immediately turned to her cookbook, ‘salt sugar smoke’*, perched patiently on a shelf back home and I bagged up enough of this slightly unexpected harvest knowing that there was a recipe on page 226 waiting for my attention. This is just one of so many deliciously approachable recipes in the book. Not readily available on the interwebnet thingy - all the more reason to buy your own copy!
*Diana (or her publisher) goes all lower case headings with this 2012 offering so please don’t be jangled by my faithful repetition of the device here and in the title of this post.
Trust Nigel Slater to wax art historically over this fruit.
The pickling liquor took up the raw sienna pigment from my cinnamon sticks.
It would have been a missed opportunity to ignore our first Poinsettia of the season’s appearance in the house. #feelingfestive
The peeling, cutting and particularly removal of the core will have you marvelling at the decidedly tough nuts you are dealing with. You will need a sharp knife and the taking of much care.
Poaching the quince segments is a tense time. The potential for reducing them to unwanted mush is roughly in line with that of parents who supervise like hawks but suddenly need to ask themselves, “How in Fook’s name did my child come to have that pair of scissors in their hand!?”
Alles in ordnung. (My low grade pass in German O-Level just reared its ugly head!) Sterilised jars and slightly reduced pickling liquid meet up with the just soft, but not too-softened, quinces. Ready for lids to be screwed down and seals to be clipped tight.
The combination of sour and sweet and the presence of quince’s perfume make this a heady mix. I’m not even going to question if this batch will be mature enough by the end of the month. It will most definitely make an appearance on Boxing Day with our traditional ‘cold collation’ lunch.
An extra reward for my efforts remains. Enough pickling liquid survived, its tang softened by quince contact. Leaf gelatin will be added to make a jelly. Lozenges of that around a cut of pork or a terrine will add a ‘Cheoffy’ touch to some of my more developed plates very soon.
Labels were applied for a final photo before I settled down to write on some of Mrs Cheoff’s hand-crafted Christmas greetings cards. It looks like we have enough of a generous Kilner jar of pickled tracklement to accompany our own festive hams, cheeses and terrines. That small, but perfectly formed, supporting duo of mini jars might be used as gifts. But for whom? Hmmm…