Quince
I have a bit of an obsession with the fruit. Several times a year I think of Quince. I have to wait until fall to use it though. Now as soon as I see it in the market, I start buying even if I don't know what I'll use it for. This autumn was no exception. With several good specimens in my bag I inhaled the flowery fruity fragrance as soon as I got in the car to remind me why I love this fruit.

I figured this would be a good time to replenish my supply of fresh quince paste (jam, membrillo ...) and I set about researching a new method. In the past I have thought I should learn more about quince. How to tell a ripe quince for instance? How can I get that fantastic red color every time I cook it? Quince does have a rather alchemical nature. It starts out white, but with cooking has a tendency to turn color anywhere from a peachy pink to ruby red.

Ripeness: For those who don't know quince at all it is an apple shaped but lumpy fruit, mostly yellow with a little green. It usually has some fuzz on it which should be easily rubbed or washed off. Ripe Quince as I've found out should be yellow (a little green is OK) with the ripest ones lacking the signature fuzz. I always err on the side of a bit unripe ie. fuzzy, because I usually take several days to a week to find time for my quince projects. Also there is the signature smell. Without that intoxicating scent the fruit is definitely not ready to eat. I've never seen them in the market that unripe but there's a first for everything right?

For my first quince project of 2008 I planned to braise the quince in a bath of water, agave syrup, cinnamon stick and lemon juice. I've done this a few times on top of the stove, but while researching recipes this year I came across a lovely method for braising in the oven. This recipe is great because you don't have to slice the quince into small pieces, just peel, core and cut in half. Be sure to take advantage of the quinces natural abundance of pectin by adding peels and cores along with the whole fruit to your braising liquid. Simply cover the casserole with foil and roast slowly at 325 degrees for 3-7 hours. They are done when they are soft enough to slide a knife through.

This method also called for adding a few apples to the mix in order to keep the quince moist. I didn't really find this necessary, but it did make for some kick ass quince flavored applesauce

Quince Jam

5-7 medium quince peeled, cored and cut in half
2 cups water
3/4 cup agave syrup (or sugar)
juice of 1 lemon (to taste)
1 cinnamon stick broken up
Peels and cores from your quince

Mix your braising liquid together and taste it. Add more sugar or lemon to balance the sweet/tart taste. Pour liquid over fruit, which should be cut side down in the casserole.

When the fruit is finished cooking, separate the apples and some braising liquid from the quince. Using a food mill, run the quince with the peels etc. though until it is ground finely enough for your taste. Set aside to cool. As it cools the quince jam should get quite firm. If you know you don't want it too firm add more of your braising liquid to the mix.

If you used apples put them in the food mill and run them through with a bit of the braising liquid to make applesauce.

I served this quince jam with Thanksgiving turkey.

Quince Galette

For my second quince project a request was made. It was Christmas dinner, and hoping to get a chance to show off I asked if I could make anything to bring. It was a welcome relief when my suggestion for something with quince was met with enthusiasm. "As a matter of fact" said B "I was just looking at a quince galette recipe that I thought would be great." "Plus there is a no fail dough recipe I've always wanted to try." He gave me a 2001 issue of Sauveur to use, and I thought the galette looked divine. I had bought more quince and figured I could add a few apple slices if I didn't have enough for the recipe.

I decided to use the same quince oven braising method as before, but this time to cook it for a shorter time so the slices of fruit would be firmer. Let me say that for the most part I didn't follow the method in Saveur. I did experiment with the quince cooking method they suggested, which was to cook the quince slices in butter and sugar until tender. It felt a little iffy, although I had done the saute pan with butter and sugar with other types of fruit and been successful.I feel that quince responds to slow braising methods best.I used the same method as for the quince jam. I only changed one thing, which was to take it from the oven after 2hours. While I was letting it cool I made the pastry and chilled it. Slicing the braised quince was easy and I reduced the braising liquid to pour over each serving of galette.

Quince for the Galette

5-7 medium Quince peeled and cored and cut in half
2 C water
3/4 C Agave syrup or sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 cinnamon stick broken up a bit

Braise about 2 hours at 325 degrees, cool and cut into thick slices.

Sorry to say I didn't use the Saveur pie dough recipe. It was one of those recipes that made multiple pie crusts but couldn't be divided. For example it used 1 egg as part of the liquid for 8 pie crusts. How do you divide 1 egg eight ways successfully? So I made my favorite sour cream pie dough.

For the Dough

1 1/2 cups of flour
8 tablespoons cold butter cut into tablespoon sized slices
2 tablespoons of goose fat (use more butter if you don't have this)
1 tablespoon of sugar
pinch of salt
cold cold sour cream

Pulse the dry ingredients in a food processor. Add the fat piece by piece while pulsing the processor.(or by hand use a pastry cutter) Begin to add the sour cream a tablespoon at a time until the dough just comes together. Stop pulsing and dump the dough onto a floured surface. Without overworking, or getting the dough too warm, bring the dough together into a cohesive ball. You can chill it for a little while before rolling it out or just roll it out to a 12-14" circle. Fold it into a quarter round and chill wrapped for at least 30 minutes.

Quince plus Dough equals Galette

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and lay it on a cookie sheet or pizza stone. Arrange the quince slices in circles on top of the dough, starting from the center until you have only about 3" of dough showing all the way around. Gently pull up the edge of the dough and fold over and over again, until the fruit is wrapped in the dough. There will be a opening in the center that you can see the fruit in. Brush egg white on the top of the crust and sprinkle with sugar.

Tips for pie dough:

Cold cold cold Ingredients make good pie dough
Don't work it too much and always chill and rest dough before using
Brush egg white on the raw dough before you fill it to prevent soggy crust.
A little Goose fat or lard or even bad bad Crisco will make a much flakier pie crust.

You know its funny. I've been baking cookies for years. I've learned some tips and tricks over that period, but it takes just one little read through McGee "On Food and Cooking" to give me pause as to what I really know about baking. I've been having the urge to bake for a number of weeks now. I had a big bag of oats, bought intending to make granola, but hadn't made it yet. This naturally had me thinking about oatmeal cookies. I always loved my mom's oatmeal cookies. She put everything into them: Rice crispies, coconut, chocolate chips, raisins, nuts you name it. Of course she made the plain ones too, which I believe came from the recipe on the Quaker oats box. I started there, searching online for that recipe. It looked good, but I couldn't resist checking out other recipes. There seemed to be whole websites devoted just to oatmeal cookie recipes. This of course leads to the inevitable urge to change the recipe. I also like to compare one against the other to see basic proportions and areas where I can customize. I finally settled on one recipe with some adjustments. This recipe did something I never thought of; using toasted oats. The original recipe had a pretty low ratio of oats to flour so I used proportions from more conventional ones, but kept in the buttermilk and the toasted oats for interesting flavor.

Here's the recipe:

1 C Butter (3/4C is ok)
1 1/2 C Brown sugar packed
1 tsp Vanilla
2 Eggs

3 C Oats
1/2 C Buttermilk *(or soured milk)
1 tbs Molasses

1 1/2 C Flour
1 tsp each of Cinnamon and Nutmeg (cardamom is also good)
1 tsp each of Baking soda and Baking powder and Salt

Raisins 1 cup or more
Toasted Walnut pieces 1 cup or more
Good quality Flaked salt for topping (optional)

Method:
Toast approximately 1/2 the oats in a preheated 350 degree oven until golden brown. Practice using your nose to smell when done. It's cool how many times you'll be right if you pay attention to smell. Put toasted oats in a bowl separate from the untoasted ones, and let cool. Toast nuts at the same time.

Cream Butter and sugar in a mixer until lightened and fluffy.
(approximately 5 minutes so air is incorporated). Add eggs one at time and mix thoroughly after each addition. Add vanilla.

Measure out your dry ingredients. Put flour, spices, leavening and salt in a bowl. Whisk lightly to combine. This is to make sure your salt, leavening and spices are distributed evenly throughout the flour

Add Molassas to Buttermilk and stir to combine. Add to toasted oats and stir to coat.
Soured milk can be made and substituted for Buttermilk by adding 1 tsp. vinegar or lemon juice to whole milk. (let stand 5 minutes before using)

Add dry ingredient mixture in three stages mixing until combined each time.

Stir in by hand the toasted oat mixture and untoasted oats. Add raisins and nuts if desired.

Spoon out cookie dough by teaspoon, tablespoon or more depending on the size cookie you want. Use parchment paper or silpat mats on the cookie sheets to keep raisins from caramelizing and burning on the bottom of the cookies. Bake at 350 for 7-15 minutes depending on size. Take cookies out when golden brown around the edges. Leave on cookie sheet 1 minute to finish cooking and cool a bit before removing and cooling on rack.

Salt variation: Sprinkle individual cookies, with a very small quantity of flake style sea salt before putting in the oven. If you like the kick sea salt gives caramels, this will deepen and make richer the caramel flavor of the final product. I love Maldon salt. It's not too expensive and gives just the right amount of saltiness and crunch.

What McGee taught me about making drop cookies.

A higher proportion of liquid to flour produces soft cake like cookie texture or crispy depending on how much water is baked out. This goes along with the type of sugar used in a recipe. More sugar in a recipe can produce cookies that spread more, because as sugar melts it turns liquid allowing cookies to spread. White sugar can melt and recrystallize making a crispier cookie while brown sugar or honey has more moisture and doesn't get to that stage as quickly. Moister sugars can also make cookies spread, but sugar itself helps cookies rise by the process of mixing with fat. When you cream the butter and sugar it allows the formation of air bubbles, which in some recipes is all that is used for leavening. As far as fat goes, butter allows the cookie to spread more too, because it has a lower melting point than shortening. All of this is interesting to me, because it allows me to decide what I want the finished product to look and taste like. You can still follow recipes, but you can judge for yourself if it is a well written recipe and if will come out well, before you use it. Plus with knowledge you can change things knowing what will happen if you do. I highly recommend having a copy of McGee for reference. It increases my cooking skills every time I consult it.

It's been a long time. I've cooked some amazing things since I last posted. I've read a lot of great books about cooks and cooking, and become a devotee of several cooking blogs. I kind of lost interest in blogging myself, because I didn't know how to do anything cool like pictures etc... I still don't, but the tools have gotten easier and I think I can do more with this now. I just want to add a recipe that I love and think I made up. It's a variation on a cold soba noodle salad. I researched it a little on google and didn't come up with anything like my combination. I just want to write it down so it becomes accessible to searches. I think it is yummy. It is inspired by my favorite nigiri combination: Unagi, avocado, sesame. I love avocado. It's so decadent. It combines the great creamy texture of the best fats with a light flavor that balances all kinds of acids put with it.

Cold Soba Noodle salad

Best buckwheat soba noodles you can find (1/2 package)
1 ripe avocado (prefer Haas)
1 tablespoon + of mixed black and white goma (sesame seeds)
Seasoned rice vinegar to taste (at least 1/8 cup)
Unagi fillets optional (amazing with them, great without)
Dribble of sesame oil to taste
Couple of pinches Maldon salt (optional)

Cook soba noodles in salted boiling water until they have a tender bite. 3-6 minutes
Cube avocado
Toast sesame seed mix in a small saute pan about 1 minute tossing constantly
Cut in half, or use whole unagi fillets

After noodles are cooked, drain and rinse briefly with cold water to stop the cooking.
Drain well to get rid of excess water. In a large mixing bowl, add rice vinegar to noodles and toss to coat. Let noodles cool in the fridge if you have time. The noodles will soak up more of the mild vinegar flavor and become delicious. After noodles are completely cool, taste and add flaked salt if needed. (use Maldon or any other flaked salt you have. It will gently salt the noodles and be a slight crunchy texture in the finished product) Add avocado cubes and unagi if using. Add most of the toasted sesame seeds. Toss to mix thoroughly. Plate and top with remaining sesame seeds. Drizzle with sesame oil (no more than a teaspoon) Garnish with cilantro or sweet 100 tomatoes cut in half.

Additions that taste great:
More tiny sweet tomatoes
1/4 cup of cilantro leaves mostly unchopped.
Fresh blanched sweet corn
I usually don't add everything in any one salad, but you can choose based on what you have available at the time.

I've been sick for 3 days and think I should write a lot while I have the time at home. In fact there's nothing to help me procrastinate since it's also raining buckets. The only person who hates going out in a storm more than me is Princess Ruby, who clings to the sides of buildings and turns into every doorway to avoid getting wet. Ruby is a princess pug who is indispensable in the kitchen, because she spends all her time underfoot hoovering up anything that falls off the chopping board onto the floor.

After the spritz cookie project I decided to start a new project of making homemade caramels covered in chocolate for Christmas gifts. I mean I bought the candy thermometer, so I feel an obligation to use it at least one more time, ya know. Caramels. Dangerous amounts of hot sugar, which if you don't cook it to the right temperature it can turn out soft and runny and distinctly uncaramel-like, as well as being totally unsuitable to dipping in chocolate. I had my fears. I must have read the recipe a hundred times.

It's Sunday and I finally decide that it is sunny and dry enough outside to make caramel. I'm not taking any chances with atmospheric humidity wrecking my caramel. I measure my corn syrup and sugar into the stock pot and begin to warm it up and melt it. Ok so far. Then I re-read the recipe and see that the butter has to be softened and mine is still in the refrigerator. No problem. I'll just get it out cut it up and put it in the oven where the pilot light should soften it up by the time I need it. Whew! Disaster averted! I need to scald the cream with the vanilla. I get my incredibly expensive Tahitian vanilla bean out and split it in half. Scrape the seeds out and put them in the cream.

You know what else is great is that C gave me a jar of vanilla sugar. (Vanilla pods and sugar macerating together until the time you want some sweet smelling and decadent sugar in your tea or on you cinnamon toast.) Plus it seems like a very non wasteful way to get everything you can out of a vanilla bean.

So I turn on the heat under my new glass saucepan with my cream and vanilla bean goo and watch carefully for it to do that scalding thing, which to me means that it bubbles then it begins to foam and boil up a little. The only thing I didn't think about was my new glass saucepan. I got this thing out in the hall with a couple of other abandoned pots and pans. (The tenants in our building is so great about recycling their old stuff to the rest of us via the hallway) Anyway I forgot that glass gets very hot and tends to hold heat for a long time even after you turn it off . You can guess what happened, and I was powerless to stop it. I turned off the heat at what I thought was just the right moment, but the damn thing just kept on foaming, boiling and rising and overflowing. By the time it stopped I had lost at least a cup or more of my cream and God knows how much expensive vanilla goo. I tried not the think about that as I measured what was left. I tried to be philosophical and because I didn't have enough cream left for the recipe or more in the fridge, I had to go out on Sunday morning and try to find more cream. First two corner stores are out of cream. The second one attempts to convince me that half and half will work just as well. No? How about whipped cream in a can? Finally I accept my fate and make my way to the fancy schmancy Bi-rite grocery, where I know I will find what I need. I get twice as much just in case.

While I was waiting in their god-awful line I notice that they carry a lot of special chocolates by local celeb chefs, and they have a sign for boxes of chocolate covered caramels topped with fleur de sel. Cool. I really wanted to try these caramels. I searched through tons of s'mores kits and other twee items but alas no salt topped fancy caramels. Oh well, it really is time to stop procrastinating and get home and make my caramels, which are now definitely going to have salt on top of them. Ok so they won't be as vanilla-y. No one will ever know. I pour the new cream and the old cream into a regular metal pan whose heat I can control and the rest of the scalding goes well. The cream should be hot but you can re-heat it if it gets too cold.

Now the sugar and syrup are bubbling and boiling and the mercury is climbing. Finally it gets to the hard crack stage or 305° Then I begin to add the butter I had speed softened and stir it with the salt until it melts and mixes in. Only something seems wrong. Why is it so greasy? Why isn't it mixing in? Why don't I read the recipe? Let's just say I've been baking for almost 4 weeks and every recipe called for 2 sticks of butter. So when I saw the number two and the word butter; I somehow spaced the words in the middle calling for only 2 oz of butter! Shit, I put at least 4 oz more than is called for, and now I have one big gooey greasy mess going down the drain. While the pan was soaking I considered that maybe I shouldn't make caramel that day, the gods were not with me. But no; it's too beautiful of a day and my brother is coming to visit, and I've got to have some caramel for him when he arrives. So I gotta start over. Only now I don't have anymore corn syrup and even the gourmet store can't help me there. I get on my bike and pedal to the closest supermarket. I finally find the corn syrup and again I pick up more cream 'cos today you never know. My little bike basket full I hot foot it home hoping all the sugar has melted off my pot so I can start again.

At least now, I fully understand the (method) of this recipe, something C is always harping on. "Read the method carefully before you start" That is something I promise to do better next time C. In any case, after two tries finally success! The cream, poured in very slowly and cooked with the butter and sugar smelled heavenly. I poured it into my pans. It's got to cool for at least 5 hours. My brother is here and we are going to the movies, yay!

On a side note:
I saw a cool way to line a square pan with parchment paper on Jacques Pepin. Cut the paper into a square. Fold the paper diagonally corner to corner first one way and then the other. When the paper is a triangle make a cut about 2 inches straight into the top of the triangle. Refold the other way and make the same cut on the other side. When you lay the paper in the pan the cut parts automatically miter into the corners of the pan. The other interesting thing about the recipe for caramel is that it says to pour the caramel into the pan but not to scrape the pan. I followed that instructions for the good stuff, but I hated to waste any caramel, so I scraped the rest into a small metal bowl to have something extra to try while waiting for the good stuff to cool. The stuff I scraped was definitely different. It was more like sugar daddy than caramel. Hard and chewy. Luckily the caramel not scraped was soft but solid, just like you would want it. More adventures in chocolate tempering to come but I'm being forced out the door to try to go see The Lord of The Rings final movie, so I gotta go!

Christmas was one sticky mess, I gotta tell you. It started innocently enough, with a small goal. It was a goal I had attempted before, but had never quite succeeded at. All I wanted to do was to provide my customers with fresh baked cookies every day from December 1st to Christmas Eve.

I don't think I've mentioned what I do for a living. Possibly I am secretive or possibly I don't think anyone will read this besides me or a few friends. In any case I have a store in the Mission district of San Francisco selling local handmade stuff.

Serving a small snack to shoppers. The idea seems good, but how to accomplish it without running out of steam before the end. So I got inspired by a childhood memory. Each year at Christmas, my mom would get out this gun looking thing. She would load it up with pale cookie dough and slowly squeeze out pan after pan of cookies, which we kids got to load up with colored sugars and candied fruit centers. The thing must have worked pretty well, because I don't remember any tears or tantrums over those cookie projects. I don't have a cookie press but I didn't feel worried. Surely one could use a pastry bag. After all wasn't a cookie press just a 60's invention to take all the joy out of making cookies by making it too convenient?

I began my search online for Spritz cookie recipes and then ones that could possibly work using a pastry bag instead of the cookie press. I found a recipe that said it was soft dough that would be usable with the pastry bag. Yeah right! I squeezed and squeezed and had a hell of a time getting it out of the bag. My arms were incredibly sore the next day. But I did hit on a strategy for having enough cookies until the very end. If I could make a few large batches of cookie dough and freeze already formed raw cookies in Ziplocs, I could take a few dozen out each day and bake them fresh before work. After the pastry bag fiasco, I didn't exactly want to make another batch of spritz, so I settled for my favorite, no fail, makes a lot, recipe of molasses crisps.

MOLASSAS COOKIES

4 C all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
2 ¼ tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground ginger
1 ¼ tsp. ground cloves
1 ¼ tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cardamom
½ tsp. black pepper if you like them extra spicy
2 sticks of butter (softened)
1 ½ C white sugar
1 ½ C brown sugar
½ C molasses
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350° use silpats or parchment paper on your cookie sheets

In a large bowl whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, ginger, cloves and cinnamon.

In another bowl with an electric mixer beat together butter, sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the molasses. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture and combine well.

In a small shallow bowl put ½ C white sugar. Form dough into small balls (the bigger the balls the bigger the cookie) and roll in sugar. Arrange balls far enough apart to allow for spreading.

Bake cookies in batches in the middle of the oven for 7 to 15 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Cookies should be soft and slightly cracked on top.

The texture of these cookies varies according to baking time. Underbake them if you like a chewy cookie and give them a minute or two longer if you like them crispy.

This recipe makes a ton of cookies. I got a tip from C to roll the dough into logs and then cut off the cookies I needed each day. It saved the time it takes to roll them into balls, which was good. Of course, knowing me, I got obsessed with making them as small as possible, like the tiny cookies they serve at fancy restaurants. I think my all time smallest was ¾ of an inch! The problem with this was that people at the store kept asking me if the cookies were dog treats! I have my dog at the store every day and I guess they got confused by the small round dog treats Ruby gets, and the plate of sugary delights on the counter. Go figure! After those were gone C took pity on me and bought me a cookie press as an early Christmas gift. Suffice it to say I went a little spritz crazy! I made chocolate spritz and almond spritz, and any kind of spritz I could think of, to make it through to 12/24. I think the almond spritz were the best. Add a ton of almond extract and substitute almond meal for 2/3 cup of the flour. The raw dough tastes like marzipan. Yum! Anyway I made it through to Christmas Eve. I baked about 3 or 4 dozen cookies per day times 24 days. That's a little more than 1000 cookies! Martha would be proud.

Well Ruby and I have finally woken up from our Thanksgiving food coma. It was stressful doing all that cooking but really cool sampling the final results. Actually, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really enjoyed the food more the next day than I did on Thanksgiving. I guess I was just too full from sampling everything and cooking all day to feel like eating it. Luckily hunger always comes back!

This particular party was billed as a bunch of professional and would be gourmet cooks doing the Thanksgiving thing. For the most part it was very very good. I did miss turkey, but Squab and Pheasant were a great experience. It was funny because C and I had it all worked out what we were going to do to make the birds, and then B calls and says that he's just been to Auberge Du Soleil and has several quarts of seasoned duck fat, so why don't we confit all the legs of these game birds. Like we have time for that! Still it was too good of a cooking opportunity to pass up. Luckily the legs of squab are really really small. I thought they could have used a couple more hours cooking to make them real fall off the bone confit. If I hadn't been making my savory bread pudding in the crock pot I would have put those little guys in there to cook. I'm telling you crockpot confit is the way to go. You season the meat like usual and then layer it in the crockpot, cover with the fat and set it on low for as many hours as it takes. It's a good method if you don't have lots of fat because the crock pot is usually narrow and tall so it's easier to fill up than a wide pot or pan. The great thing is that I am now the proud owner of 2 quarts of fabulous duck fat waiting for me to find a turkey and do the legs this week.

Hey, why is it so hard to find a whole turkey after Thanksgiving? I haven't found one yet and every day it gets less and less likely it seems. Plus I have a whole bunch of cranberry chutney that didn't quite go with the birds we had. It was way too much food and my freezer is full of the side dishes of thanksgiving waiting for tukey. Help! I know I can find one. I just have to get serious and go to a regular supermarket, there are sure to be lots of fozen turkey bowling balls there.

I was going to write tons of stuff about the food I made and the stuff I went through cooking my dishes, but now I am on to other cooking adventures, which makes all this seem like a long time ago. I'll just say that when you cook something special you've never worked with before, it's usually a one shot deal and you never cook that thing again. But I worked with a special fruit this holiday and I really think it is a keeper, and something I will use again now that I know how to cook it and tame it. This great fruit is Quince. I've always been intimidated by it because it is ugly, and hard as a baseball. I had read of it's legendary scent, but I couldn't smell it in those piles of unsightly lumps at the produce market. It wasn't until I got one home, that the perfume filled my small kitchen. Still I let it sit there for 3 weeks, because I was afraid I would cut my hand off if I wasn't extremely careful. Time was moving on though, and I had to make my quince soon or my quince cake for Thanksgiving wasn't going to happen. Interestingly the new issue of Saveur came the day I had finally decided to tackle it, and they had a recipe for a quince jam that made me buy even more quince, so I could do both recipes. This recipe was very different from the one that came with the cake recipe. It wanted me to cook half the quince rough chopped (seeds, skins, and all) in water for two hours. Then run it through the food mill. Skin, and slice thin the rest of the quince and add to the first batch. Cook again for 2 more hours. Run the whole thing through the food mill again and finally add the sugar and lemon zest. Cook for 2 more hours. I started it after work and didn't get done until 1 in the morning! Don't get me wrong it is very good. It is a very thick and firm jam that will be great spread on bread with a little goat cheese or machego, but the time, yikes! I also thought it was a bit sweet. The other quince recipe couldn't have been simpler. It only called for quince slices in a stock pot with water, lemon, cinnamon, honey and sugar, then simmer for 2 hours until it turns its signature pinky orange color. WOW! This batch was stunning. Sweet tart and almost candied. The only hard part was setting each slice of fruit on paper towels and blotting it dry for use in the cake. The cool part is the poaching liquid left over. That will be very useful in future cooking projects. So quince is cool and not as hard as I thought. The great thing was taking the opportunity to try two very different recipes for the same ingredient, and seeing what works best. It's much more likely that I will use this fruit again now that I know which way works best. I gotta go to work now, so more later...

So I went to visit my friend C. who works as a pastry chef at a local restaurant here in S.F. She is always asking me to come in a cook with her for a day. A day in the life of a pastry chef. The idea has a lot of appeal. But the hours:( I get up early, but her hours are truly punishing. Anyway, it was really cool checking out her little pastry chef area. She gets a lot done in a relatively small space. While I was there (1 1/2 hours) she made 3 tarts with mango pastry cream, a ton of tiramisu, spiced nuts and other assorted toppings and plating accessories, and finished up a whole bunch of assembly. WOW!

Like most people who go out to eat I imagine these super creative people coming up with recipes and lovingly preparing the food just for me. Well check it out. Yes they are creative, yes they love food and the techniques of cooking, but no it's not always the case that they themselves have come up with the recipes. Of course we all know that lots of things we eat in restaurants are classic preparations that were created long ago. Perhaps our chef that night will tweak the recipe or make it using a different vegetable. That I understand. But what I didn't know was that sometimes these great cooks use the same consulting body that you or I could when making our own home cooked stuff. So I'm helping C. make the spiced nuts. First she has me breaking the walnut halves up a little. Then she pulls out a book and says, "double this recipe and assemble the ingredients, but use 1/3 the pepper." The book was a Martha Stewart cookbook. Who knew? I've always wanted this particular, book and didn't know if it was any good. Well if its good enough for C. I guess it's good enough for me. I can't wait until I go in and work a whole day.