Quince
This week, I bought six quinces at the market.
Sometimes you read about foods, and when you finally get to try them, you find that the articles you read are a bit overdone. You read that certain fruits were used to "perfume a room" and it's never true. You get one or a few and you can't smell them.
Well, it's true about quinces. I kept one out at work and I smelled it all day. When I got home, I put the six quinces out on the table and later we left for a few hours. When we came home, the entire apartment was perfumed by the smell of the quinces. It was extraordinary.
I don't know how to describe the scent. A spicy floral with apple and pear undertones, but utterly different too. It's very intoxicating. You put your nose up to it and you smell and are intoxicated, for just a moment. I understand now why painters painted these, why Aphrodite, Hera and Athena would fight over for one. "Golden Apple" doesn't begin to cover it. "Golden Delicious Apples", the apple cultivar, is pale and mealy and so far removed from this glorious lump of fruit that it's practically an insult to it's memory. The man who developed "the Golden Delicious", I think, never had a quince.
These are unripe quinces, still green and covered in fuzz. Over time they will get gold, but in this climate will never be soft enough to eat raw.
Last night I peeled three fuzzballs and made quince sauce. Tart, I added a 1/2 cup of sugar to it this morning. The color is extraordinary. A beautiful rose - a color a woman might wear on her lips or nails, the color of an 1930's movie star's gown, or the light of a boudoir. A sensual color, rich with perfume, thick with sweetness and pectin that coats the tongue in velvet.
Oh my, oh yes. The quince, I believe, may be my new favorite fruit. I'll be buying more if I can, and leaving them through the house to slowly ripen. I'll bake them with honey for dessert, turn them into cordial, stew them with chunks of lamb, and stuff tenderloin of pork with them.
They are hard to cut, and terrible raw, but my oh my - they are just glorious with a little effort put in.
Aren't the best things that way?
N.
Sometimes you read about foods, and when you finally get to try them, you find that the articles you read are a bit overdone. You read that certain fruits were used to "perfume a room" and it's never true. You get one or a few and you can't smell them.
Well, it's true about quinces. I kept one out at work and I smelled it all day. When I got home, I put the six quinces out on the table and later we left for a few hours. When we came home, the entire apartment was perfumed by the smell of the quinces. It was extraordinary.
I don't know how to describe the scent. A spicy floral with apple and pear undertones, but utterly different too. It's very intoxicating. You put your nose up to it and you smell and are intoxicated, for just a moment. I understand now why painters painted these, why Aphrodite, Hera and Athena would fight over for one. "Golden Apple" doesn't begin to cover it. "Golden Delicious Apples", the apple cultivar, is pale and mealy and so far removed from this glorious lump of fruit that it's practically an insult to it's memory. The man who developed "the Golden Delicious", I think, never had a quince.
These are unripe quinces, still green and covered in fuzz. Over time they will get gold, but in this climate will never be soft enough to eat raw.
Last night I peeled three fuzzballs and made quince sauce. Tart, I added a 1/2 cup of sugar to it this morning. The color is extraordinary. A beautiful rose - a color a woman might wear on her lips or nails, the color of an 1930's movie star's gown, or the light of a boudoir. A sensual color, rich with perfume, thick with sweetness and pectin that coats the tongue in velvet.
Oh my, oh yes. The quince, I believe, may be my new favorite fruit. I'll be buying more if I can, and leaving them through the house to slowly ripen. I'll bake them with honey for dessert, turn them into cordial, stew them with chunks of lamb, and stuff tenderloin of pork with them.
They are hard to cut, and terrible raw, but my oh my - they are just glorious with a little effort put in.
Aren't the best things that way?
N.