BYLUCASHOLLWEG
Quinces look
like hard,
yellow
elongated
apples. They
will keep for at
least a couple of weeks in the
kitchen, filling the room with
their perfume. When raw, the
flesh is inedibly hard, pale and
sour, but when you cook it with
sugar it turns soft, fragrant
and deep garnet in colour.
To make quince cheese
(membrillo), chop the quinces
- skin, seeds and all – put in
a large pan with cold water to
cover, then bubble until the fruit
collapses. Push through a sieve
into a bowl (discard the solids).
Weigh the purée, then mix it
with 450g caster sugar to
600ml purée. Put in a heavy-
based pan over a gentle heat,
then cook slowly, stirring often
with a wooden spoon, until the
mixture leaves a clear line on
the bottom of the pan when you
draw a spoon through it (the
cooking will take at least an
hour and up to 1½ hours). Tip
into a mould greased with
sunflower oil (a plastic food
storage box is good), then
leave to cool. Cooked quinces
are great in frangipane tarts
and cakes, too.
See p49 for another great quince
recipe from Gill Meller
USE UP A GLUT OF...
QUINCES
The correct oven
temperature is fundamental
to successful baking. Some
ovens can be as much as
20-30°C off kilter, as we
discovered with one of the
four ovens in our test kitchen
a while back – which would
have been a disaster for
testing the recipes in our
Collector’s Edition (betweenp74-75). You can buy an
oven thermometer for as
little as £5 from kitchenware
shops (Tala makes a good
one – £6 at dunelm.com).
TEMPERATURE TOO HIGH
Biscuits will be crisper, more
golden and at risk of burning.
TEMPERATURE TOO LOW
The bake will be delicate and
pale, and the biscuits soft.BAKING BISCUITS
W hy oven temperature matters