PIE OF THE WEEK - Quest for Quince!

My friend Marina challenged me to make a pie of fresh quince and ground pasilla peppers. She thought the combination of flavors would be exotic, and quinces are in season right now, so she encouraged me to bust out of the comfort zone and experiment with new ingredients.

DEFINITELY OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE. Although I've eaten quince paste (membrillo) in the Spanish style before, I had never knowingly eaten a quince that I had cooked myself. I wasn't even sure exactly how to cook them.

But rather than let all that deter me, or be dragged down by the experience of people who knew better, I bought five quinces (a quint of them), some pasilla powder, and then tried to figure out how to make a pie.

First, you peel. The peel is edible but tougher than an apple's, so I decided to leave it out. Then, you core. This part was difficult. It was much like cutting through a winter squash. The cores were surrounded by some hard, woody material that I resorted to digging out with a knife. And finally, you chop. I made chunks about 1/2" by 1/2".

At this point, I thought to myself, "Self, are you sure this fruit is ripe?" The self was really not sure. But there was all that raw material, cut up and oxidizing. So what could I do? I made pie. I added sugar, a pinch of salt, at teaspoon of cinnamon, and about 1 to 2 teaspoons of pasilla to the fruit. Honestly, I had no idea how this would turn out. The smoky-woody quality of the pasilla combined with the sharpness and familiar tang of the cinnamon to make something different from the sum of their parts. I thought that even if the fully baked result was not completely palatable it would at least be interesting.

The fruit and spice went into a double crust pie in a PYREX pie pan, like Mom used to have. I baked that thing for over 50 minutes, to make sure the fruit was adequately cooked. The result smelled pleasingly of apple pie. That was not what I was expecting.

The fruit ended up not cooking down very much, and although soft and moist, it seemed there was not enough moisture in the fruit to make it smooth and a little juicy. The quince pieces looked like chunks of sweet potato, and lended about the same mouth feel as cooked sweet potato. I thought that quinces turned red as they cooked, so I expected the filling to be a nice rhubarb color when it finished baking. Instead, the chunks of fruit were a dusky orange-brown, again, like sweet potato. And the flavor of pasilla was not evident at all in the final product.

The crust was dynamite, though.

If I look at what could have gone better, I come back to the following potential issues:

• underripe quinces (maybe get them at the farmer's market next time)
• too much cinnamon and/or not enough pasilla
• may need more sugar than the 1/3 cup I added to the filling
• may need to add liquid to the fruit mixture to get it to cook better; this could be something like cherry or apple juice (or apple sauce?
  

If you have any other suggestions, let me know. The quest for quince and pasilla pie is not at an end. I think it's a flavor sensation worth pursuing. The first one was not a winner, but I am not discouraged, and have all season to suss it out. I will follow up with my next trial. Fortunately for Sac Pie, someone is always willing to consume the rejects from these experiments.

Next Pie of the Week: Cranberry