Thursday 20 September 2007

What A Nice Man!

Bit of a long old day today at the Palace, I finally left at 10.00 this evening having spent from 6.00 onwards doing some stuff for TV. For those in the UK it was for ITV's This Morning and it was with Phil Vickery.........what a genuinely nice guy he is (and I don't say that sort of thing very often!), both interested and interesting to talk to.

It's apparently for a short series of features on 'history food' and I/we did a quince pie. Quinces are a wonderful aromatic fruit if you've never tried them before; very hard and quite inedible raw, but baked in a pie like this recipe and the results are a joy to eat........quince are just starting to come into season and I can heartily recommend you trying to cook with them if you can find some. If you can't get the quinces, try pears instead (wardones are a variety of pear) or how about some fantastic English apples which like the quince are now coming into season.

Quynces or Wardones in paast.

¶Take and make rounde coffyns of paast; and take rawe quynces, and pare hem wit a knyfe, and take oute clene the core; And take Sugur ynog, and a litull pouder ginger and stoppe the hole full. And þen couche ij. or iij. quynces or wardons in a Coffyn, and keuer hem, And lete hem bake; or elles take clarefied hony in-stede of sugur, if thou maist none sugur; And if þou takest hony, put thereto a litull pouder peper, and ginger, and put hit in þe same maner in the quynces or wardons, and late hem bake ynog.

The crew were good and knew exactly the shots that they wanted which made it all go nice and smoothly......even better than that the pie that I'd pre-made this afternoon for the finished article wasn't too bad, just a touch too much ginger I felt, but not a disaster.

Before you ask, no I can't recall when it is going to be on the telly and no I didn't take any pictures......sorry.
Off to bed now and tomorrow is full of meetings about all sorts of grand plans for the future, so it'll be another early start for me then.....roll on Saturday and a nice lie in.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nowt to do with the post but have you seen this?
http://www.kakawachocolates.com/

Marc H

Tudor Cook said...

indeed I have matey....looks very nice

Helen said...

The things you get us all looking at! Now I'm hankering after some of their chocolates.

You need to go Georgian mode for a while to start producing!!!!

Helen

Helen said...

And having seen you guys prepare this dish two or three times, I really ought to give it a go. I was really chuffed, having been given a quince "shrub". But, alas, there was no point in my getting my hopes up for a supply of quince. It's an ornamental shrub.

Any tips, Richard, as to a particular variety of apple to go for? Pretty please!

Helen

Tudor Cook said...

Well as you know Helen, the wardon is a variety of pear....we tend to substitute 'conference' as it's firm enough to stand the cooking and still stay in one piece, but that's only my personal preference!

You could choose any pear that you like the taste of, same with using apples which are how this recipe seems to evolve in recipe books from the end of the 16th century.

By now, you should be used to me giving vague answers! If in doubt.....experiment and try it using several varieties; see which one takes your fancy.