Our Poached Quince Recipe

Hello friends,

Today I thought I'd share our poached quince recipe with you. It's the perfect autumnal dessert to eat with vanilla ice cream on a cool night. And if you have any poached quince left over, just freeze it away to eat at a later date. Quinces are an acquired taste, just like feijoas, but once you've tried them, their wonderful aromatic taste will stay with you all year, as you impatiently wait for their autumn harvest once again.

The hardest part of the recipe, is probably finding quinces. When we lived in Wellington our local New World stocked them for a few weeks each autumn, so we bought them when we could, and made up a big batch to last us over the year. Now we live back home in Dunedin, it's a bit harder to find quinces, as the local shops don't stock them. Luckily this year, I had an excess of pumpkins, and I swapped a big crown gray pumpkin for a box of quinces with an online friend, but this excess pumpkin harvest swapping adventure is a whole other story.

For this recipe you'll need:

3 - 4 ripe quinces

750 mL of water

1.5 cups of sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1 vanilla pod (or 1 - 2 star anise if you can't get a vanilla pod)

 

The recipe:

1.    Peel and core the quinces, chopping off any damaged sections. The fruit are quite brittle and hard, so it's a bit of a job to do. The fruit are unpleasant to eat raw, so I wouldn't advise trying it.

 
2.    Chop the quinces into slices or cubes depending on how you'll want to eat them. The  fruit will start to oxidise quickly (turn brownish), but don't worry about that, it'll all turn out okay in the end.

3.    To a pot add the water and sugar, mix, and begin to heat to a simmer.
 

4.    Add the quinces to the pot, and add the cinnamon stick and vanilla pod. You can swap out the vanilla pod for star anise if you want, but personally I prefer the vanilla pod.

5.    The next thing to do is to make a paper cartouche for the quince mixture. A cartouche is a parchment paper lid, and it covers the surface of the poaching mixture. It traps the steam, and keeps the components submerged in liquid. 

We just cut off a section of grease proof paper, and folded it so it fitted on top of the quince mixture. It is important to mold it to the mixture so it keeps everything wet.

6.    With the lid of the pot off, heat the mixture up, and then let it simmer for an hour.

Over time the quinces will slowly change colour, changing from a creamy yellow, to a dark rose pink.

This is the colour at the 30 minute mark, it hasn't changed to a pink shade yet.

7.     This is the colour at the 60 minute mark. The quinces now are a rose pink, but not quite dark enough. If you do a taste test you'll find them still slightly bitter, but the quinces will be soft like cooked apples.

8.    What you are looking for is a slightly darker shade of rose pink, and the quinces will taste highly aromatic. When you're happy with the flavor and taste, remove the cinnamon stick and vanilla pod (or star anise) from the mixture. Remove the pot from the heat.

9.    The only thing left to do is eat it, storing any left overs in the fridge or freezer. I recommend having it while still warm (or re-heating in the microwave), with some good quality vanilla ice cream. The vanilla ice cream really brings out the aromatic quince flavor.

I hope you get a chance making our poached quince recipe yourself over the autumn season, they really are a wonderful fruit. We currently have a fresh batch stored in the fridge to eat this week, and also a couple of frozen batches stored away for later on in autumn and winter. 

Please let me know if you give this recipe a go, and tell me what you think of it.

Have a wonderful day.

Julie-Ann

Planting Miniature Irises for Spring

Hello friends,

I can't resist a good plant catalogue, well any plant catalogue really. If one shows up in my mailbox with the plants all decked out in bright and colourful flowers, how can I resist buying bulbs in autumn for the coming spring?

Well I can't of course, and especially when they're tempting me with miniature plants. As you will see in spring, for some time I have been adding to my crocus and Tete a Tete daffodil collections. The tinier the plants the better, in my opinion.

Well this time the Garden Post plant catalogue offered me miniature irises. Teeny tiny irises that would be only 15 cm tall at most, and would be one of the first bulbs to flower in spring. Before I knew what I was doing, four different varieties were in my online shopping cart, and it wasn't too long before 28 bulbs arrived by courier. I ordered miniature irises in shades of blue and purple (Alida, Blue Note, J.S. Dijt, and Painted Lady).

The next weekend I weeded an area of the back garden, near a very small plastic pond with a waterfall that is solar powered. I pulled out my trusty bulb planter I bought a couple of years ago, and got to work.

I use my bulb planter for not only flower bulbs, but garlic bulbs also. The planter has a handy measurer on the side, so you know how deep to dig the soil depending on what bulb type you are planting. When you pull the plug of soil out of the ground with the planter, you just pop your bulb of choice into the hole, and then by squeezing the handle, it will release the soil back into the ground. If you are planting large amounts of bulbs, the planter will not only save you time, but also wear and tear on your joints too.

It wasn't long until all my new precious bulbs were in the ground. And now I wait, through all of autumn, and then winter, and hopefully fingers crossed, as we move into spring, my new miniature irises will appear. I can't wait to photograph them in all their glory.

 

Autumn has been such a busy time of year with many harvests and processing of produce happening at the moment. But not only that, I've recently had sinus surgery, followed, by a small complication, and now a sinus infection. I'm hoping to continue recovering from both the surgery, and the infection very soon, so I can get back out into the garden. The weeds are taking over, even though the weather is cooling considerably.

 

Have a wonderful day.

Julie-Ann

My Decorative and Dinner Plate Dahlias

Hello Friends,

Today I wanted to share with you the rest of my beloved dahlias. As you already know from a previous blog post, I have an obsession with anemone and collarette dahlias—but I also totally adore the big boys of the dahlia world, the decorative and dinner plate dahlias too. These dahlias are the ones you'll pay big money for, and you will also have to compete with thousands of other dahlia lovers in New Zealand to buy tubers before stocks run out.

Cafe Au Lait is the most popular of all dahlias, for both home and commercial growers alike. They are the dahlia that everyone wants in their wedding bouquets. They are probably the most expensive dahlia tuber to buy, and also the hardest one to come across. It took me three years before I could buy a Cafe Au Lait tuber, and the year I finally got it, I actually ended up with two after ordering from two different suppliers.

The big players in the dahlia tuber world are Bulbs Direct, NZ Bulbs, and also Garden Post. They are online suppliers for all the plant bulbs and tubers you could ever want, and their orders are pre-orders for the up coming season. In mid to late winter if you are signed up for their newsletters, an email will arrive telling you that dahlia tubers are available for pre-order. If you're after a Cafe Au Lait Dahlia, don't hesitate, just go immediately to the website and order straight away. Popular dahlias can sell out within minutes of the email arriving in your inbox. For the first three years of trying, this is how I missed out in getting a Cafe Au Lait dahlia of my very own.

Their flowers are as big as your hand, and the flowers can vary from a delicate cream, all the way to an almost purpleish hue. I've been growing them now for a number of years, and I've discovered they aren't the easiest dahlias to grow. They aren't the strongest growers, and they require more water than other dahlias.

The next dinner plate dahlia I own is Cafe Au Lait Twist. It was released in New Zealand in 2022, and I was lucky to get one in the first season. Cafe Au Lait Twist is a sport of Cafe Au Lait, but it has curvy petals, with beautiful pink splashes through the Cafe Au Lait coffee colour. Cafe Au Lait Twist is overall a very pretty dahlia, and I actually prefer it to Cafe Au Lait.

The third dahlia in the Cafe Au Lait family that I own, is Cafe Au Lait Rosė. This dahlia was also released for the first time in New Zealand in 2022. The flowers are absolutely beautiful, a bright, but also a delicate, rose pink. The shade is darker as the flower opens, but turns into a lighter ombrė shade as the flower gets older. In all truth, Cafe Au Lait Rosė is my new favorite dahlia. I love to go out in the garden and just look at it. The plant is strong and sturdy, and definitely worth buying.

The next dinner plate dahlia I own is Dahlia Penhil Watermelon. The curved petal flowers are absolutely huge, and much bigger than your hand. The flower is a mix of peach, lavender and the tiniest hint of yellow. Because of the very large size of the flowers, the flower stalks I've found aren't strong enough to hold the flower heads upright. Dahlia Penhil Watermelon, is still a very pretty plant though.

My next dinner plate dahlia I own is Penhil Dark Monarch. Another huge dahlia, it's thin, but gently curved petals are a beautiful smoky plum colour with hints of yellow. It's another one of my favorite dahlias.

My next dahlia is a cactus dahlia called Orfeo. Although the berry red colour is quite stunning, the plant itself isn't strong enough to hold up its own flowers. It has to be staked upright, or else it falls on the ground.

And my last big dahlia in my garden is Dahlia Pink Magic. I also bought this dahlia in 2022. I love the delicate pink stripes on the cream base colour. It's probably one of my most demure dahlias in terms of colouring. Because it was a long hot summer in the garden because of drought like La Nina conditions, I didn't get many flowers, but hopefully I'll get more next year.

So that's all the big dahlias that I currently have in my garden. I don't have the space to add anymore dahlias into my garden, but you never know, if another beautiful and perfect dahlia comes along, I may have to squeeze it into one of my garden beds.

Have a wonderful day,

Julie-Ann