Fen Shen: I take it that's some sort of sweet fruit leather in your picture? Good savoury quince paste looks a bit like that, but has little or no sugar (I put a touch of salt and a little honey in mine, and spices such as mace, ginger, and turmeric. Sometimes I add a few rosehips, which I may also do with the sweet variant, or ripe rowan or hawthorn berries to the savoury one. My aunt used to add marjoram, sage and pepper to the type meant to be eaten with meat or cheese. I often put apple paste (especially crabapple) and both kinds of quince paste, on a cheeseboard, or with paté, or put a slice with roast beef or pork, or on a steak or a pork chop. Before I cook the pulped quinces down to paste or fruit leather I hang them up to drip through a muslin bag, then boil down the juice with lemon and sugar to make quince jelly, and bottle it with a few leaves of rose or peppermint-scented geranium.
What variety of quinces do you have? The really perfumey ones, like 'Smyrna' and 'Pineapple' are lovely baked, poached or stewed. Poach them in wine or fruit juice, with a strewing of raisins or cranberries, a little honey, ginger and a vanilla bean. They can also be cooked and bottled, or 'canned' as the Americans say, to keep for winter. You can make quince wine or liqueur, and the local grower of muntries (an Australian native berry) showed me how to make very tasty fruit leather/fruit straps/rollups with leftover quinces, apples and pears cooked down to a paste with muntries, then spread and dried. Since muntries already taste like cinnamon apples, this works well!
You may be amused to know that an old English marriage custom was for the couple to eat a raw quince together. You doubtless know how astringent is a raw quince! If the couple were still speaking to one another after, they were considered likely to be happy together.
Ana: thanks! I'll do my best!
