Roast Quinces

Recipe for "Roast Quinces" from Nigel Slater's "Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard".  The recipe says that when you poach the quinces "they may be ready in twenty-five minutes or perhaps take a little longer". I only poached mine for 25 minutes; this was too short.  They were pierce-able with a paring knife, however, after eating them, I think you should poach them until you could cut through them easily with a spoon.  In the noted beginning the quince chapter, he says that "we cannot hurry a cooking quince.  They are ready when they fell like it.  I have know the most stubborn to take forty minutes or more to poach to tenderness in sugar syrup.  The really large ones, the weight of a small pineapple, can take even more of our precious gas."  Quinces taste awful when they are raw; they are only palatable when they are thoroughly cooked--they are a cook's fruit.  You cannot eat the skin of a quince, so you have to remove all of it.  In addition, quince skin turns brown quickly, so you either need to immerse cut pieces in lemon water, or rub them with half a lemon.  Slater also says that quinces keep in an open bowl for months, so if you want to try some, you should buy them when you see them, and you can cook them whenever you feel like it, without feeling rushed.  They become sunset colored when cooked.

I made 2 quinces (4 halves).  We tried two of the quince halves after I poached them for 25 minutes and then roasted them for 30.  It was edible but too hard.  To soften up the remaining two halves, I roasted them for an additional 30 minutes.  I came very close to drying out and then burning the sugar; I should have watched them more carefully and added water, however, the juice turned out fine, almost quince paste-like.  Unfortunately, the fruit didn't soften with additional roasting, so next time I would recommend poaching for longer since I would have liked my fruit to be softer.

I served this with ice cream; quinces taste nice with ice cream, however if you serve them with ice cream it is absolutely essential that you cut them into small bite sized pieces.  That is, don't serve them as just the quince half that was cooked in the recipe, and don't just slice them either.  They must be made into small bite sized cubes (slice them lengthwise into strips and then cut the stripes crosswise into cubes), that are small enough to eat in one bite and to fit on a spoon.  Preferable you should cook them until they are nearly falling apart, though if you cube the fruit into small bite sized pieces you have some flexibility here. Otherwise the dish is hard to eat since it is easiest to eat ice cream and poached fruit in a bowl with just a spoon.  Ice cream is easiest to eat in a bowl, but it is awkward to use a fork and knife in a bowl so eaters can't easily cut the fruit.  It is awkward to put this on a plate and to use a fork and knife to eat ice cream and the quinces.

Also, if you want to serve these with ice cream, then don't serve them piping hot, since they will melt the ice cream.  Room temperature is better, and it is even better if you slice the fruit.