An update on the Cheap Date cocktail post from yesterday…I made one during service last night for the gang (Denise, Angel) to try and it tasted pretty flat. Then Angel made a cocktail he’s been working on and it was so much better. Well ok, then. That’s the way it goes. He’s got a cool one coming up if we can pull it all together but that’s not until tomorrow…But today…For right now…Quince…The most high maintenance of all the fruits. You can’t just eat one off the tree. I mean, you can, but it’d be a real bad experience for you. It’s a bit like eating a really, dry, tannic, hard piece of sponge.

So then what do you do with it? You simmer hell out of it, that’s what you do. Use lemon and sugar to coax more of the color out. Wait what? Yeah, in order to get anything from quince you’ve got to cook it for an annoyingly long time. At least a couple of hours. Sous viding in simple syrup and some lemon juice, a sprinkle of some spices of your choice, is probably the easiest way…But of course…I don’t do this…We have the suction machine and the bags, the kitchen uses it often…I just don’t. I don’t know why but something about it either intimidates me or maybe it was because I was told to be careful putting liquids in it…That I imagine putting some syrup in there and the whole thing explodes and then ruins the guts of an expensive piece of equipment. Yeah, anxiety is a thing. But with quince, this is sort of the way to go (sous vide not anxiety) because cooking it on the stove top takes a long time and there will be lots of evaporation going on.

There’s an old saying, “The juice must be worth the squeeze.” What about, in the case of quince, “The red hue must be worth the simmer?”

If I may be so bold I’d say a quince is like a beautiful woman…Ok, ok, or man…Yes, let’s flash quickly to Metaphor Corner. Just like a beautiful woman (or man), it takes time, patience, and some frustrating interludes, lot’s of experience and humbling efforts in order to bring the flavor and nuances out. Umm.

Harold McGee, in his book, On Food and Cooking, gives us the science behind it all. The quince, part of the rose family along with pears and apples, contains certain chemicals that are transformed during the cooking process. Yeah, duh. I’m not going to even think about trying to explain the whole thing, but instead just give you the passage from the book with all the long, mysterious technical words and let you figure it all out.

Page 282: Creating Color from Tannins On rare and wonderful occasions, cooking can actually create anthocyanins: in fact, it transforms into color! Colorless quince slices cooked in a sugar syrup lose their astringency and develop a ruby-like color and translucency. Quinces and certain varieties of pear are especially rich in phenolic chemicals, including aggregates (proanthocyanidins) of from 2 to 20 anthocyanin-like subunits. The aggregates are the right size to cross-link and coagulate proteins, so they feel astringent in the mouth. When these fruits are cooked for a long time, the combination of heat and acidity causes the subunits to break off one by one; and then oxygen from the air reacts with the subunits to form true anthocyanins: so the tannic, pale fruits become more gentle tasting and anything form pale pink to deep red.

Uh, ok, egghead. Ha. But if you read closely, he says you need oxygen, so sous vide may not be the right way to go after all…Also, cyan is blue not red…Not sure why that matters…

Once the quince is cooked, it’s pretty tasty, but is it worth it? I don’t know. Is anything worth it? I think that’s a poor argument. Quince are cool because almost no one ever does anything with them. Here in SoCal it’s grown locally and you don’t really see it being served possibly because no one knows what it is or knows how to coerce the damn things to theirr true, more edible form. But hey, how many bars and restaurants are serving seasonal, local produce in the first place? Not many.

Each year I dick around with quince I get Mr. Burns syndrome where I sort of forget about the process from the previous year. Last year we were the most successful with it. We spawned the Be Somebody cocktail formula that would lead to the Nobody’s Fool. Or was it the other way around? Can’t remember, but I can remember the odd specs, funny how that works. Here they are:

.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

1 oz. of Clarified Milk Punch of Choice

1.5 oz of Some Sort of Spirit

.5 oz. of Amazake Nut Orgeat

.25 oz. of Fresh Fruit Syrup

1 Dash Shio Koji

Last year this was goat’s milk quince punch, white rum, macadamia orgeat, and guava syrup. Maybe we can turn it on its head this year and use quince as the syrup and guava or something else as the punch? I don’t know. We’re at this weird crossroads right now where all the old cocktails are about to run out and I really have nothing new to replace them with. Shit. Better get a move on. That quince sitting in the walk-in shall be simmered and coaxed into existence. Expect something new down the pipe here…With quince!