THE QUINCE, THE WHOLE QUINCE.

Sometimes the act of cooking is completely transformative. You take something practically inedible and turn it into something very delicious. Clever you.

But rarely is it such an act of transformation as with that hard, nobbly old-school fruit, the quince.

The flesh of the quince is scarily astringent, and it’s your job to fix that.

Too hard? No, too easy.

All you need is water, sugar, spices and time. Leave it until the weekend, put them in a slow oven in the morning, take them out six or seven hours later, and eat your way through them all week.

In the process, the colour of the flesh changes from pale yellow to a deep burgundy, and the flavour mellows to a sort of gently sour plumminess that is quite unlike anything else. As a cook, that’s a very satisfying outcome.

NEED TO KNOW

# Quinces smell good. Buy them a few days before you cook them so you can sweetly perfume the kitchen with them. Or drive back from Canberra with quinces in the car as I did, inhaling deeply.

# Cook with core and seeds intact for the pectin, and add the peeled skins back in – it all helps to create a beautiful syrup.

# Quinces don’t like to be bothered. Once they’re in the oven, leave them the hell alone. Do not stir, turn or otherwise interfere, or they will hold it against you and go mushy.

# Treasure the cooking liquid and use it to finish every dish in which you serve them. Use also with tarts, ice-creams and cakes. Add a spoonful to a negroni, dry martini or glass of sparkling water.

# Serve cooked quinces with cream or ice-cream. With goat cheese or aged cheddar on oatmeal biscuits. With roast pork – incredible. With roast duck – wow. With a winter salad of watercress and gorgonzola. With pumpkin in a tagine with couscous. With buffalo mozzarella – oooff.  With pork sausages. With panna cotta. With the weekend’s French toast, waffles or pancakes, or your breakfast muesli or porridge.

# Use them to make a quince upside-down cake or souffle, or steamed quince pudding. Or pile them onto a rough hand-made galette of almond pastry - which sounds so good I might just do it as the recipe for next week. If anyone wants me to.

SPICED QUINCES

• 4 medium yellow quinces

• 400 g sugar, brown or otherwise

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise

• 2 star anise

• 1 tsp peppercorns

• 4 cloves or 2 cardamom pods

HEAT the oven to 120C.

SCRUB or rub the skins of the quince to remove any down, and trim off the ends.

CUT the fruit in quarters and peel (reserving the peel), leaving core intact.

COMBINE sugar, cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, star anise, peppercorns, cloves and 1.2 litres water and bring to the boil.

ADD the quinces and reserved peel, cover tightly and bake for 6 hours, without moving or turning the fruit.

CHECK for doneness - a skewer should move easily through the flesh, yet they should retain their shape. For more colour, push it for another half hour or hour.

REMOVE and allow to cool, then gently remove the quince.

CUT out and discard the core and seeds.

STRAIN the juices into a pan (fish out the cinnamon and star anise and reserve) and simmer on high for a good ten minutes, keeping an eye on it.

COOL and return the quinces, cinnamon and star anise to the reduced syrup.  

SERVE the quinces and syrup, cool or reheated, in any way imaginable. Serves 4.

The ‘before’ shot, after about three hours cooking. Are we there yet? Nope.

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Thanks for reading! Feel free to subscribe for more Jill Dupleix Eats in your inbox every Thursday.  And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for sacrificing his lunchtime baguette to turn into my French toast and quinces.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.