Quince shines in rustic French-style tart
Apple-like fruit cannot be eaten raw, but poaching brings out their divine scent and blush-pink flesh
In October, I flew to Paris to visit a friend living there. We were there to do research in Normandy for her next book and spent days driving around the French countryside — eating moules frites in Etretat, cobbling together dinner from a French grocery store while staying in a remote 17th century chateau in La Pommeraye — and, of course, drinking lots and lots of cidre.
On one of our last stops at Michel Huard, a calvados producer in Saint-Germain-des-Grois, we were invited for lunch into the matriarch’s home, where she ended the meal of roast veal and potatoes with the region’s classic, simple tarte au pomme. She explained the tart was simply puff pastry with chopped plain apples tossed on top, baked then sprinkled with a dusting of granulated sugar. As I reached for a fork to eat the tarte, Madame Guillouet-Huard beckoned me to instead pick it up with my hands. “Like pizza!,” she said. It was heavenly, and the crisp pastry held up the apples as rigid as a plank. It tasted more of apples than the other two apple tartes I had that day (a mini one for breakfast and an elegant wedge that night at dinner), and I went back for a second piece.
During a translation error, I thought I heard her say she also makes the tart with quince, and my eyes lit up. I couldn’t speak French, and she couldn’t speak English, so my friend had to translate my excitement. But upon clarification, I was wrong; madame insisted on apples. Still, I couldn’t shake the thought of rosy pink, perfume-like quince sitting on that pastry, warm from the oven. After we left their home, stuffed with apples and veal, we drove for hours through drizzly grey mist and beautifully broken down country estates, and I could think only about making that tarte with quince.
Quince are, I’m confident to state, my favourite fruit. Their aroma is intoxicating in the truest sense of the word, smelling of equal parts Sweeties candy disks crossed with a super lime-tart baked apple. Unfortunately, unlike their autumn counterparts, they’re not grown on a wide scale, so unless you have access to a good farmers market or have an expensive grocery
store carrying a few, you’re not likely to come across them. And unlike almost every other fruit on earth, you can’t eat them raw, but instead must commit to cooking them for hours before you can enjoy them. Most people are automatically turned off by this, but they’re missing out, and well, that leaves more for those of us who know the work is worth it.
Unlike the apples for Madame Guillouet-Huard’s tarte au pomme, which require only a quick chop, you’ll have to poach the quince beforehand but this should be seen as a boon and not a deterrent. Poaching the quince is the best way to cook them, allowing you to steep them in a light broth made of water, wine and sugar suffused with winter spices like vanilla bean, cinnamon, star anise and fresh bay leaves. You’ll cook them for an hour and a half, but don’t worry, once they’re going, they take care of themselves, and you, in turn, are blessed with a house filled with their divine scent and the sight of their blush-pink flesh. Once they’re poached, the spirit of that Normandise tarte au pomme comes back into focus as you toss the wedges on a round of puff pastry and bake it until the bottom is crisp and crunchy.
While the tart bakes, I reduce the poaching liquid to a thick, ruby-red syrup that I then brush over the fruit once it’s done. The glaze keeps the fruit from drying out and intensifies the quince’s heady flavour. It’s not quite Madame GuillouetHuard’s tarte in flavour, but it’s just like her tarte in spirit: Cook with the best fruit you can get, don’t mess with it too much, and you’ll be rewarded with a dessert too simple to be this damn good.