Quinces...

I've always loved cooking. There is something gratifying about spending time creating food - not just for sustenance - but for the entire sensory experience, physically working with your hands to chop, stir, saute, and enjoying the smells, tastes and sights that cooking brings.

Before leaving Sydney I discovered a wonderful place, not far from home called Cornersmith. This fantastic enterprise includes a cafe and picklery where they bottle and preserve a range of jams, preserves and pickles and using the local produce. You might think that local produce in an urban area is limited, but you'd be mistaken! Herbs, vegetables, fruit, honey, you name it someone has it growing in their back yard (or on their nature strip!) In a wonderful display of community this produce is shared in return for jars of the finished product. How great is that?

You won't be surprised to learn that this spirit of giving and sharing is alive and well in the country. My sister-in-law's large and abundant vegetable garden and fruit trees have ensured I haven't been lazy since moving here, so far I've managed to turn out a Peach and Lime jam, a Pear and Apple chutney, Burnt Fig and Pear Paste and today I'm going to try my hand with a fruit I've never cooked with before - quince.

Driving down our street the other day I noticed a fruit tree growing in a vacant block. It was heavily laden with large pear-like fruit. The fruit was too big for pears or and the wrong shape for apples but after thinking for a while it occurred to me that they might be quince! How exciting!! So the other day I stopped on the way past and picked one. Yes - said google - it is quince. Visions of quince paste with aged cheese danced in my head - but even more compelling was the memory of Nana Beryl's quince jelly.

So yesterday I attempted both quince paste and quince jelly. I'd looked up some recipes online and read through the recipes I had in various books and was set to go!

It was a long and occasionally arduous task - I have a blister at the base of my index finger which proves how hard quinces are to cut. But all in all I'm pretty happy with how this first attempt turned out - which is lucky because I have more quince paste than I can poke a stick at, but only enough jelly for three jars...

You can find the recipes I've used here: Quince Paste; Quince and Rosewater Jelly