It seems I have an affinity for hard-to-cut things.
The last time I picked up a new (to me) vegetable at the farm, I wrestled it into submission, and finally got wedges of creamy butternut squash tossed with pine nuts and parmesan.
This time, I spotted a misshapen guava like fruit. I had an inking it was quince. It felt like a pear and smelled somewhat like an apple and maybe a wee bit like guava. I bought one fruit to experiment with. I started to peel the fruit – it felt like peeling one of those extremely tough Indian pears. Next, I quartered them by thrusting all my body weight on the fruit with my knife.
What should I make? I’d seen recipes for quince jelly, but that didn’t excite me too much. Not when I’ve 4 jars of Nutella, 2 jars of Speculoos spread, and 1 jar each of chestnut jam and fig and walnut jam on my kitchen shelf. Plus, it’s not something you do with a single fruit.
Baking quince sounded like a never-ending wait (2 hours!), so that wasn’t an option. Thus, I discovered a whole new delicious world of poached fruit crumbles. Of course, like everything else this week, it got a good drizzle of the best caramel sauce in the world.
This is an extremely simple recipe where you poach the quince with some spices until it’s soft, then slice them up and place them in a dish, and top them with crumbled biscuits – cinnamon loaded like Speculoos or the spicy gingersnaps. The tender fruit being the perfect contrast for the crunchy spiced biscuits. Easy.
You could do the same with pear or apples. Pear + red wine is gorgeous.
Poached Quince Crumble Recipe
Ingredients
2 quinces, peeled, cored and quartered
1 stick cinnamon
1 star anise
1/2 cup sugar
water, enough to cover the quinces for poaching
6-8 spice biscuits (Speculoos, gingersnaps), crumbled
Method
- Place all the ingredients in a pan and let it simmer on a low flame for 12-15 minutes. Check for doneness with a knife – it should pass through without much resistance. Cook for an additional 5 minutes if required.
- Remove from the water, drain and then slice them up.
- Place the sliced quince in a dish and then sprinkled the crumbed cookies.
- Let it sit for a little while (10 minutes or so) for some of the biscuits to soften and absorb flavor from the poached quince.
- Drizzle with caramel sauce. Serve warm.
