Last week we cooked a dish of lamb meatballs in quince halves and it was a bit on the sour side. We probably didn’t needed extra quince cooked with the onion round the base and, even then, it might have been too much. Possibly the original recipe used the fruit of the western Cydonia oblonga quince rather than the oriental ones from the Chaenomeles family? The ornamental ones, gifted by a friend, is what we have though so how to make use of them?

I decided to try dehydrating them and creating a powder, like I’ve done with beetroot and other things in the past. That got to the grinding stage tonight and the result was a muted orange yellow powder with a distinctly sharp tang. However, you can easily control how much you put on. I used a frugal measure on the pork shoulder steaks we had for dinner and it was just a subtle nuance of flavour.

I reckon I could push up the quantity without reaching the sourness we had last week but, for now, I’ve got another batch started. The fruit won’t last forever in raw form and this is one way to help it stretch out without adding lots of sugar to make jellies and cheeses.