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Food and drink

The mighty quince: You’ll not see nor taste nothing like it

Come all without, come all within; you'll not see nothing like the mighty quince. At least, nothing like the one that’s in my hand right now — it’s such a beauty that I’m sure it would cause even the mighty Dylan to forgive the usurping of the above line on its behalf.

It’s a hard dense fruit, this quince. Somewhere between a lumpy apple or a bumpy pear in shape, and much the same size, but with a much thicker stem extruding from a knob that looks as much like a fruit-ish belly button as anything ever did. Turn it on end and there’s a large leafy calyx on the bottom.

This quince has turned a bit waxy on the surface as it’s ripened from its earlier state, when it was the siren green of unripe Bartlett pear. Now it’s mellowing to the neon yellow-green of chartreuse, and even though it’s still hard as a rock, the fragrance — oh, the fragrance — is loaded with a mouth-watering tang somewhere between a tropical paradise that grows guavas and a certain tutti-frutti anchored in my teen years.

If you’ve never cozied up to a quince before, it’s worth buying one just to sniff it and dream.

This lumpy-bumpy quince that fascinates me so was plucked from an orchard not that far from Whistler, at least as the crow flies — by my best reckoning, about 125 km east-north-east of the top of Burnt Stew Trail.

Paulo’s orchard and market garden have defied the rabbit bushes and sage that normally claim the dusty brown banks of the Thompson River. It colonizes such a steep bank on the east side of Highway 97 that a mild earthquake would probably shake it into the river hundreds of feet below.

If you had such an inkling, you could get there quite handily by taking Highway 99 up through Lillooet and Pavilion, and hanging a right on Highway 97. Or if you’re up for more of a day trip, you could split off at Lillooet onto Highway 12 south, head back down to Lytton, then catch 97 north until you came to the bend in the road about 30 klicks before the crossing to Spences Bridge.

On any day of the week this time of year, there you will find Paulo looking after his little fruit stand. It’s only been there for the last 44 years, perched under the rustic red and white hand-painted sign that seems to protect it as handily as an evil eye from the vagaries of highway traffic, including the semis rumbling past with tonnes of Vancouver garbage bound for Cache Creek.

If you’ve seen it and never stopped, you should, if for nothing else than to visit with Paulo and discreetly marvel at his wizened hands. They resemble branches from an old apple tree.

When he was a young man of 28, Paulo left his home and the sheep he milked twice a day in Portugal and came to the arid Thompson Valley, where he started his little miracle farm. Now it boasts rows and rows of Bath grapevines, Roma tomatoes (perfect for fresh pasta sauce) and, of course, a couple of mighty quince bushes, or small trees — whichever you prefer.

Like pears and apples, the edible quince is a part of the rose family, not to be confused with the much smaller, ornamental Japanese quince, grown on the wet coast for its beautiful early-blooming carmine red flowers.

The quince was once upon a time the darling of cooks in the Old World and the ancient world. It is native to Iran and Turkey, where it remains a big part of Middle Eastern cookery. But it also is appreciated in Latin America, especially in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.

But if the quince was ever popular in North America — they used to grow it in the northeastern states — it has now fallen out of favour and is only occasionally found in such out-of-the-way fruit stands. This may largely be due to its susceptibility to a bacterial disease called fire blight.

Quinces are famous for their astringent taste and their massive amounts of pectin, both of which make them a natural for jams and jellies and fruit pastes.

The word “marmalade” originally referred to quince jam and came from the Portuguese word for quinces, marmelo . So how much more appropriate could it be that I had my first taste of quince from a fruit stand run by a Portuguese immigrant?

Paulo had six of them carefully wrapped in newspapers, so I grabbed four and left the rest for someone else.

Some varieties of quince in the Middle East can be eaten raw, but not these. So he suggested I prepare them as his wife does, simmering them in water until tender and then grating them into a mash.

Mix one part sugar to two parts mash and eat it like a compote or fruit pudding. Or you can add even more sugar — he suggested a ratio of one-to-one — and spread the mixture into a thin layer in a shallow (glass) baking dish and let it dry in a slow oven. Keep it at room temperature, cutting away chunks at a time like fruit leather.

However, I decided to take matters into my own hands and consulted my good old Larousse Gastronomique , the only book I could find with recipes for quince. Unfortunately, most references seem to regard quince only as second fiddle to other dishes, suggesting we cut them up and add pathetic bits to our next apple pie or pork roast. But Larousse came through in flying quince-like colours, so I ended up combining two recipes, one for a compote, one for jam.

If you’ve found some quinces here’s what you do: wash and quarter them, removing the cores (which contain the most dazzling fan-like arrangements of seeds I’ve ever seen). Barely cover the pieces in water and simmer over medium heat until the pieces are soft. Remove from heat, drain and retain the water. Let the pieces cool until you can handle them, then dice or otherwise smoosh them into a soft pudding-like consistency. Add sweetener to taste.

Now here’s where you can make a couple of choices: I went for a lightly flavoured honey gathered from blueberry bushes for my sweetener, but I’m sure sugar would do. And don’t be afraid to taste your quince compote au naturel . It’s delicious.

Contrary to Paulo’s advice, I only used about one part honey to six parts quince. I added enough liquid leftover from boiling to create the consistency I wanted (even the liquid was delicious to drink without any sweetener), then reheated the whole thing until the honey was melted.

After it cooled, I split a ripe banana, added some vanilla Haagen-Dazs, and lavish mounts of my quince compote. I topped it off with some toasted, chopped almonds and walnuts and toasted coconut, and what a mighty, fragrant quince banana split we had. I’m sure even Bob Dylan would have dug in.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who has mixed feelings about divulging her secret source for quinces.