Serve with ice-cream or yoghurt for a simple desert, use in a pie or tart. Great in a salad with bitter greens or in Amy Minichiello's Quince & Lemon Thyme Crumble Cake. The syrup can also be used to glaze tarts or dress a salad.
Ingredients
4 cups water
1 cup white sugar
5 quince
1 vanilla bean or 1 tea vanilla paste
Method
In a large, heavy based pot (preferably cast iron) bring the water and sugar to a simmer
If your quince are furry, rub off fur, then peel, core and cut into wedges
Add the wedges of quince and vanilla to the pot, and cover with a heavy lid. Poach over a low heat for 3-4 hours, until deep ruby red. Do not stir.
Allow to fully cool in the pot before gently transferring to a container, this will stop you having a mash of quince and maintaining the wedges. If you want to serve immediately, gently lift each wedge individually from the pot.
Notes
Codling moth damage a lot of quince, signs of codling moth damage include tiny brown holes over the skin and black trails of poo left by caterpillars from the skin through to the core where they feed on the seeds. I generally get rid of any of the core and fruit that has these black crumbly trails.
If you find highly damaged fruit like this, never add to the compost, always burn, bin or feed to chickens, you do not want to infest or reinvest your fruit trees.
If you do not have a heavy pot with heavy lid, a great tip from Sophie Hansen is to cut a circle of baking paper, slightly larger than the pot, and press down over the fruit and syrup.
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