Quince Sauce

I like quince marmalade and paste with their distinct tart and sweet flavours. But I wanted to make fast and easy sauce from quinces, which I can use every day with rice porridge, cottage cheese or yogurt in the morning, and as a thick topping for ice-cream or desert.

This is a very simple recipe, completely done in 35-40 min. Fast cooking process leaves the most of the fresh goodness of quinces and gives wonderfully thick tart sauce with amazing colour and taste. For this recipe you have to use completely ripe quinces at the end of the season. They are softer and sweeter, are fully cooked in 10-15min, and their pectin levels are not as high, so you will not end up with a jelly.

Ingredients:

• 2 quinces (500g 0f peeled and cored flesh)
• 3 table spoons of lemon juice
• 300g sugar
• 200ml water

Preparation:

• cut quinces in quarters
• peel and core quince quarters
• add lemon juice to the bowl prepared for chopped quinces to prevent their browning
• chop quince flesh in medium size pieces, shake pieces in the bowl to cover them in lemon juice
• transfer chopped quinces in sauce pan, add water and cook for 15min on medium heat without lid

• using stick blender make a puree
• add sugar and mix it in until it dissolves completely

• transfer the sauce into jars while hot
• store the jars with quince sauce in the fridge

The sauce has a consistency of a thick apple sauce and has a taste of a fresh fruit. I like to use it on my plain yogurt to have some sweetness with flavour. It is very nice on crepes and rice porridge. It is also a perfect topping for ice-cream, vanilla panna cotta or chocolate mousse. This sauce goes well with sweet cakes, tarts and muffins, and provides a balance with its tart taste and smooth viscous texture.

Variations:

At the end of the season quinces are not as tart and sour, and without lemon juice the sauce would be too sweet. However, you can omit using lemon juice and add less sugar, when finishing the sauce. Another option is to use honey instead of sugar. In this case replace 300g of sugar with 250g of honey. Preparation of this sauce gives total flexibility to adjust sweetness of the sauce to your own taste. I would advice to add first 250g of sugar, mix it in and taste the sauce, and add another 50g of sugar, if the taste is too intense and sour.