So, it was perhaps brilliance on my part that I chose to begin my experience with preserving, jam-making and all associated concoctions with quince paste because if I'd started with something I wasn't in total love with I might have given up. Suffice to say that the directions I followed (from the brilliant A Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise) were deceptively simple and certainly didn't indicate that it would take an entire afternoon. I'm proud of myself for sticking with it and have been enjoying the fruits of my labour this evening. Yum.
In order to make quince paste you need about 8 quinces. I bought mine from a farm shop in Margaret River and really you won't find quinces for sale at Coles. My personal tragedy is that I used to have a quince tree and composted every single fruit from this prolifric tree which survived despite the severe drought. I didn't taste quince paste until a few months after I sold that property. Quinces are not for eating off the tree, so if you can find someone with a tree chances are they will be glad to give you the fruit.
Once you have carefully washed and chopped up the quinces, you put them in a large pot with a cup of water and the juice from one lemon.
Try to cook them slowly - for about 30mins or so. I cooked mine too quickly and have a large pot with burnt quince to clean up and I also suspect burning them dry made the next step unnecessarily difficult. When they are very soft, strain them through a colander and then through a sieve. This took me about two hours to do.
Don't give up if it does take time. Remember this is an old craft and our experience of having things immediately (buying them at the shop, for example) is not a good grounding for this sort of activity. During this time of exhausted arms and blistered hands, it was the love of quince paste that kept me going and a belief in something unknown that got me there as I shoved what looked like stewed apple through tiny holes - the belief that it would eventually become something I loved. Eventually you end up with a fine puree.
Put this into a clean saucepan with sugar - one cup of sugar for each cup of puree. Bring to the boil slowly and then cook over a medium heat. Now, if you did get away with an easier straining experience than me, your patientence will be tested next. The paste will take about two hours to be ready but you MUST stir it every few minutes during this time. I put a stool next to the stove and read then brought the laptop into the kitchen to blog. But you must stay in the kitchen and stir. When you start the mixture is quite wet and sloppy:
Very slowly, over time the paste dries out and begins turning a more richer colour. I never got my whole batch to be that beautiful crimson colour of the paste you can buy in the shop, although there were spots here and there like that. In fact, I probably left mine on the heat too long waiting for this to happen. But in the end it didn't matter. You end up with a paste that doesn't move on its own.
Just a pause to explain the sterilsation of the jars the quince paste will go into. You will need to wash them by hand or in the dishwasher then put them on a tray in a cold oven. Turn the oven up to 110degs and as soon as it reaches this temp, turn the oven off and leave the jars for 10mins. They should be warm when you put the paste in them, so try to time it right. The lids need to be simmered in water for 2 mins. Don't buy Ikea jars like I did which have plastic lids that buckle in boiling water and break when you try to push them onto the jars - this means I'll have to eat my paste quickly as the jars aren't airtight, but that shouldn't be a problem!
When all is ready, spoon/shove the paste into the jars and seal.
And finally, you could wait for the paste to cool before you eat it, but as mine was ready just on sunset, I had biscuits, a lovely Capel Valley chedder and the required drinks, I couldn't wait!
Delicious and virtous, home made, hand made and I know exactly what went into it.
For a "gormet" product like this this was cheap. $4 for the quinces, two cups of sugar, a lemon and an afternoon. Not a lot for one of my all time loves in life! Cheers!
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