Fall Favorites: Poached Quince

                         No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
                                  As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
                                                    John Donne

There is a lot of things that I love about fall: my birthday, Halloween, apple picking, cute jacket weather, pumpkin everything. It is also a wonderful time for cooking, baking, and, of course, enjoying seasonal treats. After learning about quince last year during research for my book, it quickly became one of my fall favorites. Thus, I happily took a few off of James' dad's hands when his quince tree was overloaded with fruit a couple weeks ago. 

James' parents are from Greece and quince trees abound there, but James had only ever eaten the fruit raw, which is really hard and tart. Naturally, he was rather skeptical when I told him how delicious quince can be. However, I think I've finally converted him this past week when I made poached quince and quince jelly. 

I followed David Lebovitz's simple recipe for rosy poached quince, though I find that mine never gets as rosy as his. I have quince envy. I also followed his suggestion to reduce the leftover poaching liquid to create a nice quince-infused syrup. 

However, I ended up boiling mine a bit too long and ended up with quince jelly. Not to worry though, it was delicious. I almost skimped on the vanilla bean because they're pretty pricey, but I'm so glad I didn't. Quince jelly dotted with flecks of vanilla bean smeared on toast is a new obsession.