Day 181: seduced

For the past week, I have been basking in the heady scent of fresh quinces emanating from the fruit bowl in our kitchen, but it wasn’t until tonight that I actually got to taste a quince for the first time. There is something so wonderfully familiar about their scent and texture; reminiscent of many individual fruits and ingredients, yet not something I’ve ever tasted in a single entity. There’s that pear-like graininess between the teeth as you chew; a nectarous, subtle, vanilla-like sweetness; a refreshing burst of citrus; and an intensity of flavour and fragrance that’s akin to that of ripening apples.

Holding my hand and walking me into the world of the joyous quince today is Nigella’s Red Roast Quinces.

Nigella’s Red Roast Quinces

On advice, from N herself, I went with slow-roasting just one quince; they are intensely sweet - and one between two is probably enough to get your weekly fix of sweetness. Though don’t panic, they’re not too sweet: a cool dollop of sobering crème fraîche with each mouthful creates magic in your mouth, making this is a star contender in the dessert realm.

The recipe is for five quinces, but for one quince I used a quarter of all the other ingredients (in other words, I didn’t use a fifth; I wanted to make a little extra syrup, just in case). For the syrup, I used half a small quince - and I’ll put the other half in Nigella’s Mostarda di Venezia, which I’m making tomorrow.

Its honey-pear, lily-strong perfume flirted with me for the duration of its slow caramelisation in the oven. And after just one mouthful of its soft-candied, syrup-soaked, heady-scented, grainy flesh - along with a sobering dollop of cool, tangy crème fraîche - had seduced me entirely. Day 181 is Nigella’s Red Roast Quinces.

You can find the recipe for this one on p210 of Nigella Summer.