Serves: n/a
Approx cost: n/a
Approx calories (per serving): n/a
Approx preparation time: 6 hours
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #0B0B61;”]In my last post I mentioned having received a whole bag of goodies from the mother of a friend of mine. I’ve finally had a chance to do something with them this weekend, in between visiting beautiful French chateaux (haha, pictures from that trip in the next post 🙂 ). So what are they, I hear you ask? Well, the mystery object was 6 kilos of beautiful, home-grown, super fresh, fully organic Quinces! I remember my mother used to have a quince bush in her garden – at least some variant of a quince bush. The quinces never got much bigger than about the size of a golf ball. These ones however…Boy oh boy, they were like huge apples, with an absolutely amazing, perfumed, rose-like aroma. They have a naturally growing “fluff” all over them when first picked – I’m unsure why the quinces grow this, but this needs to be rubbed off and washed thoroughly before use. I was about to borrow a book which gave me many recipes and recipe ideas for Quinces from my friend’s mother and I have a couple of rather delicious things in mind, but both of the recipes use something called a “fond”. The most appropriate translation I could think of in English is “decoction”. It’s also a fabulous way of using left-overs from the preparation process for the other recipes, as you’ll see.
There will be more quince recipes in the coming days, but it’s logical to post a small, simple one first, especially since I have a bit of a headache and a sore throat right now so feel more like sitting in bed (everyone say “d’awwwwwww” 🙂 )
In other news, Eva from Kitchen Inspirations and Stefanie from A Dash of Sugar and Spice were recently kind enough to deem me worthy of awarding me the “Versatile Blogger Award. Thanks very much to both of you! It’s soon coming up to a year that I’ll have had my blog. As some of you may have noticed I try and post once every 3 days. I’d like to do it more regularly but in between work and various other things … well, there just aren’t enough hours in the day – I don’t know how some of you find the time to post so frequently! (I’m looking at you Greg). Anyway – I hope people enjoy reading my posts – I hope I can sometimes inspire, or at the least make you laugh occasionally 🙂
The rules of the award are simple. List 7 “random” facts about yourself which other people may not know, and then nominate 7 other bloggers for the award. A lot of the other blogs I follow have recently been nominated for the award it seems, so I’ll still nominate 7, but don’t worry if you’ve already been nominated before by someone!
Anyway, here’s some random facts about me, as promised:
- I love languages! At school I studied French, German, Spanish. Latin and Russian. I started learning Japanese in the past but gave it up for various reasons. Nowadays I focus a bit more and concentrate on French and Swedish – logical choices as I live in France and my wife is Swedish!
- I once watched “The Matrix” about 50 times within a one month period (I was at University and bored, don’t blame me). After this time I could basically recite the entire script, word-perfect, on demand. Thankfully, that useless knowledge has now gone from my brain.
- One of my favourite smells is tomato vines – or, even better, the smell from inside a greenhouse growing lots of tomatoes!
- I once honestly thought that deer hibernated over winter by digging a little pit with their hooves under a bush and “bedding down” there. Much laughter was heard from my wife when I told her this (yeah – this actually happened a couple of years ago). I don’t know why on earth I thought this – call it a “temporary brain hiccup”… I promise I’m not as stupid as a box of bricks
- Some things I couldn’t do without in life? Chocolate, coffee, bread, coriander, basil, “Limpa” bread from Sweden (holy cow that stuff is amazing… one day I’ll make some and post a recipe!)
- I used to work in a bank in England.
- Now I work for a video games company and used to also play a lot, although a lot of my spare time goes on this blog now. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and I met my wife here too.
For the nominations, there are a great number of blogs whom I follow, and I love them all (else why would I follow them?) – this is by no means a list to “single out my favourites”, but here are some whom I find particularly enjoyable 🙂
- Joanna, at Stoveless – this started as a blog on “surviving” without an oven when the author lived in China. She’s moved back to the US now but still continues to post there. There’s some fantastic recipes for “oven-free” food there too.
- Jean, at Delightful Repast – I just discovered this blog recently and was glad I did. Just look at some of the recipes on there. Can’t wait to try them out 🙂
- Shilpa, at Baking Devils – I nominate Shilpa here in the hope it will motivate her to come back to the blogosphere. With her friend Jenny they taught and inspired me. Some of the things they stuffed into cakes… just incredible.
- Sissi, at With A Glass – I’ve already learned so much from Sissi, and the things she cooks are so inspirational. Crazy looking Japanese fish, delicious looking mousses, fruit butters… just amazing.
- Shu Han, at Mummy I Can Cook – Another blog I just discovered recently, and a truly charming history. Shu Han makes some amazing looking stuff on here – check her out 🙂
- Kelly, at Inspired Edibles – I’ll nominate Kelly because I’m jealous of her holiday home which she’s posted pictures of before. Did I mention that she posts amazing food too? Well, she does!
- Fati, at Fatis Recipes – One of the reasons I love being part of a network of food bloggers is that you learn so much… so many different ideas, recipes, ingredients. This is one of these blogs which is just wonderful!
and now for the recipe…
Ingredients
- Quinces (I had about 6 kilos)
- Water
Instructions
- Start off by rubbing each quince, to remove all the fluff, and then wash each one thoroughly.
- Peel each quince, cut into quarters and remove the cores (including seeds). Weigh the peel and cores when you’re finished. You will need 1 litre of cold water for every 1 kilo of peel/cores. Add into a saucepan and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer on a low heat for about 5 hours. After this time, strain the liquid into a container and discard the peel/cores, being sure to press as much liquid and “squidge” as possible out from the solids. Keep the liquid for future delicious quincey recipes! See, told you this was easy 🙂
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