cooking

food : all things quince

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Quinces from our backyard.

One of the best surprises we’ve had as we’ve gotten to know our house and yard was the discovery of quince trees in the rear corner of our neighbor’s yard, along the border between our two properties. Because we are the neighbor to the south, and there are other trees to the north in our neighbor’s yard, the trees grow toward the sun, overhanging our rear sidewalk and garage. During the first year we were here, we saw one or two yellow things on the ground by the back fence, and commented to each other that an animal must have dragged an apple or something into the yard and left it there. That was the sum total of the interest we paid in the situation and the energy we expended in addressing it: very little. We were busy with other parts of the yard, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it would take to clean up the property; the last thing we wanted to do was investigate mysterious happenings out by the garage.

The second year we were here, we spent more time in the yard during the autumn clearing the ivy, pruning the trees, and covering the weed-laden garden beds with a thick leaf mulch. During all that time in close proximity to the rear yard, we noticed that the yellow fruits were actually growing on the trees, and were littering our rear sidewalk by early November. This piqued our curiosity, and we consulted one of my partner’s colleagues who grows quite a lot of his own fruits and vegetables on a lovely piece of land that used to be part of a dairy farm. He told us we had quinces, a fruit of which I had only heard vague and mysterious references to before that point. Nonetheless, I gathered them up and set them on the back steps to cure while I figured out what to do with them.


Quince jelly.


Quince paste.

There are, it appears, two things to do with quinces. You can make jelly or you can make membrillo, a thick paste that is a favorite dessert in Spain that’s served with manchego cheese. You can also bake and poach them, mixing them in with apple desserts for additional flavor, which we tried as well. With two dozen enormous yellow fruits having literally dropped from the sky into our yard and folks all over the internet raving about the glory of the flavor of the quince, I decided there was nothing for it but to make jelly…and membrillo, since it would be a shame to have all the pulp just go to waste. This was my first foray into canning, and I had to improvise somewhat. I used a stockpot for the boiling water bath (which, by the way, I don’t recommend) and set to work chopping and boiling and draining and boiling and skimming and stirring and pouring, ending up with about a dozen half-pints of jelly and about 20 pieces of membrillo. Happily, everybody I know seems to love membrillo, a delicacy I had never heard of before embarking on this new culinary path. We were able to give away the membrillo, in addition to serving it to guests at every opportunity, and enjoyed the jelly for much of the year. I also learned that canning is actually not that hard — although quince jelly is arguably the easiest product to start with, containing just the right amount of natural pectin to gel on its own and turning a lovely deep rose color to let you know when it’s done.

Following this roaring success, we made a concerted effort to help the trees this year. We cut back the ivy that surrounds them and pruned all the not-inconsiderable deadwood. Once we knew what to look for, the trees became incredibly easy to identify, and we were pleased to discover two small saplings at the sides of the main grove, no doubt sprung up from fruits left to lie under the thick ivy ground cover. Later in the spring we were rewarded first by flowers and then by little green fruits. Little green fruits which soon littered the ground when the gale-force winds of the early summer storms blew through. This autumn, there was not a single yellow fruit on any of the trees, much to our disappointment. We are hopeful that quinces are like some varieties of pears, with large and small production years, and that next year will be a banner year. In the meantime, I have been combing the internet for a mail-order source of quince fruits, to no avail, having learned the hard way that their floral flavor is truly as addictive as quince fans claimed!


Tarte tatin, with a layer of quince slices — magnifique!

food : all things quince

food : chicken with pac choi

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I have this recipe that I found on the internet last year, for chicken with bok choy. I pull it out when I get bunches of pac choi from our farm share, which is a couple of times a season. It’s a tasty recipe, in a salty soy sauce kind of way, but it’s written terribly. The ingredients are in a weird order and the instructions about what you combine with what else when are completely unclear. I thought I’d written sufficient notes on the paper last year to be able to start a bit ahead this year, but I still struggled. So, I’m rewriting it and recording it here for posterity. If you follow my instructions it will be good (but not at all authentic, do not make the mistake of attempting to serve this as actual Asian food).

Chicken with Bok Choy (or Pac Choi)

Ingredients

3 skinless, deboned chicken breasts (chopped)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. corn starch

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 lb. bok choy or pac choi, including stems (chopped)
1/2 c. water
1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 tsp. grated or minced fresh ginger root
4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. oyster sauce or soy sauce
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. corn starch
1/4 c. water

Toss chopped chicken with soy sauce and cornstarch until coated; set aside. Heat oil in wok or large fry pan. Stir fry bok choy with salt and water until limp, then remove from heat and set aside. Heat oil in second wok or large fry pan. Stir fry ginger root and garlic until fragrant, then add chicken and stir fry until cooked. Mix together oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, corn starch and water; add to chicken and stir quickly to mix. Add bok choy and stir together. Remove from heat and serve immediately (with brown rice that you’ve already made in your rice cooker).

Enjoy!

food : chicken with pac choi

food : butternut sage orzo

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After searching high and low, I was able to find orzo at Whole Foods. Good to know for the future. For folks like me for whom cream is just a big no-no, orzo is the gift that allows us to have something resembling risotto. Which is what the Butternut Sage Orzo dish is. (Note: this version of the recipe omits the instructions to add the sage to simmer with the squash if you are using dried rather than fresh herb.)

It’s likely that this dish was meant to be more of a pasta dish, in the sense that the squash chunks would remain whole and be tossed with the orzo. I wanted a risotto impersonation, however, so I used my handy potato masher to mash the squash toward the end of the cooking time and create a nice thick soupy sauce to be mixed in with the orzo. It was delicious! After our experience with the Winter Squash Galette, I was pretty confident that the dish would be great, as it had the same winning combination of sage and parmesan cheese (pecorino again, in my case). I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m sure you can imagine: it looked like a warm bowl of yummy squash and orzo with sage!

There is really not much else to say about this dish or squash. Except that I still have three pumpkins, one butternut squash, and one spaghetti squash hanging about, as well as something like two quarts each of pureed pumpkin and courge longue de nice in the freezer. I will bring another batch of pumpkin bars to a dinner next week, but beyond that I got nothin. Except a recipe for pumpkin apple muffins that looks delicious if I ever get around to making it. I fear that we’re a little muffined out on pumpkin, though, after last year’s seemingly endless stream of pumpkin bread. We’ll see.

food : butternut sage orzo

squash baked with apples and walnuts

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The whole kit and kaboodle, pre-baking.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m dealing with a bit of a squash situation? Right. Last week’s efforts involved an upgrade of squash-baked-with-garlic that was inspired by a recipe at Simply Recipes (a site I use as a starting point for both new ingredients and classics that I just never tried to make before). I was planning to make the recipe as written, with adjustments to the butter and sugar, but because we live Down South, cranberries aren’t available in the grocery stores yet, even though it’s been autumn for three weeks. (Maybe this is unfair and you don’t have fresh or frozen cranberries available Up North yet, either?)

My version: toss together peeled and chunked squash (I used courge longue de Nice), peeled and chopped apples (I used Stayman, because I wanted them to keep their shape), minced garlic (I used about 4 or 5 or 6 cloves), whole walnuts, olive oil, and salt and pepper (I could have used more salt), and then bake at 375F for about an hour (until the squash gets soft). It was, I have to say, pretty good.

squash baked with apples and walnuts

gingery butternut squash soup

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Four kinds of apples, two for eating and two for cooking.

I am generally hard-pressed to choose a favorite aspect of autumn, but apples are very close to the top of the list. Each time I come home from the farmers’ market, I bring more apples with me. More types in greater volume on every trip. Today I went in search of apples for eating (my partner takes them in his lunch, and we have decided that local minimally-sprayed-and-delicious is better than shipped-from-another-continent-and-tasteless organic) and for cooking. The soup I was planning to make last week to use up some of the squash includes apples, and I’ve been waiting to get going on it since Thursday’s market was rained out. In addition to using one of the butternut squashes, it required the last of the fresh ginger from the container in the freezer and a container of broth, so I have been excited about it for many reasons. Yes, my college Tetris addiction is manifesting in an obsession with constantly rearranging the freezer to maximize space, I admit that.

Today I made it to the afternoon market and collected more apples than I currently know what to do with, including the two I need for the soup. I’ll worry about the rest of the apples later. The soup is easy (again from Simply In Season): sauté two chopped onions and two tablespoons of minced fresh ginger in oil until the onions are translucent; add 1 chopped (peeled, deseeded) butternut squash, two chopped (peeled, cored) apples, and 4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock; bring to a boil and then simmer until the squash is tender.


Soup, in the beginning.

You are then directed to puree the soup, but I hate pureeing soups so I just usually mash everything in the pot with the potato masher instead. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used the masher to actually mash potatoes, only for soup, although a friend once used it to get holiday cookie frosting to the right consistency before I bought the hand mixer two years ago. Back to the soup: mashing works pretty well if you are not French and don’t mind having slightly lumpy soup (the onions don’t mash). You’ll also probably want to add salt, unless you put a lot of salt in your stock. I don’t include any, and I’ve had to add salt for taste to every recipe in this book that calls for stock, which makes me suspect they’re assuming salty broth.


Soup, at the end.

And there you have it: soup. This recipe would probably adapt fine to the stronger, less sweetly flavored courge longue de Nice, which is good because figuring out what to do with all that squash is next week’s task.

gingery butternut squash soup