Oven Poached Quinces

It is well and truly Autumn here in Melbourne with cool, crisp mornings that blossom into beautiful sunny afternoons. Although, you guys should know by now that Melbourne has weather Tourettes and you can expect to experience climatic perfection and natural disaster scenarios all within a day here! 

I love the drizzly cool mornings though. Everything is just that little bit slower. The kitties sleep in and I am inclined to snooze that bit longer too. You can always find Frankie burrowed into a pillow fort on the couch on these mornings and Jessie Moo Moo follows me around until I give into her demands for my old dressing gown to be tossed on the carpet for her to huddle into. Apparently it's far superior to all the other blankets she owns! Once I do get up, I deck myself out in my daggy navy blue moccasins and my oversized Peter Alexander 'morning coat' and make a bee-line to the coffee machine and stove. I'm alllll about staying snuggly for as long as possible when it's crisp, cool and raining.

I also love this time of year at the markets when you see the big overflowing boxes of furry green pear-esque quinces with their big deep green leaves still hanging from the tops as they come right into season. And once you add a bunch of beautifully fragrant and warming spices, there's really no competition in my mind for what will sit atop my porridge most mornings. 

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Oven Poached Quinces

by Melanie Lionello April-12-2016

Beautiful and warming on those cooler days.

Ingredients

• 1.2kg (around 3-4 medium quinces) quinces, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 1/3 cup unrefined golden caster sugar (or normal caster sugar)
• 1.75 litres water
• 6 green cardamom pods
• 3 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 big slice orange peel
• 2 peppercorns
• 2 vanilla beans, halved
• 3 cloves

Instructions

Place water and sugar into a heavy based oven proof saucepan and heat on the stove gently until all sugar is dissolvedPreheat oven to 140 degrees Celcius. Add in quinces, and all spicesCover and cook for about 8 hours or until the quinces are ruby redStore in the fridge once cool in a container with the syrup for up to a week

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 8 hour Total time: 8 hour 10 mins Yield:

This recipe was inspired by a recipe I saw on the Food Network and Stephanie Alexander's recipe for oven poached quinces.