Quince and pear cranberry chutney

Thanksgiving is only two days away!  And Open Produce is full of delicious food.  This included a few packages of busted cranberries, which means we had almost 4 bags in my fridge, and a decent amount of quinces left.  I fought to get those quinces into the store, and now I’m probably the only one who’s bought any.  That’s okay!  They’re amazing.

So, inspired by the Gourmet recipe for Cranberry, Quince and Pearl Onion Compote, I embarked upon my own cranberry sauce.  Usually my dad makes an amazing cranberry sauce, so my task was to make one that was just as good, but different enough so as not to compete when we make them both in the same year.

I never write down or follow recipes, so I’ll just tell you what I did.

I washed a bag of cranberries, and peeled and sliced 2 shallots into small wedges.  I was going to use 5 shallots, but they made my eyes water so I thought 5 would be way too strong.

Dice 2 quinces into centimeter-ish sized cubes, peeled and cored – put the cores with seeds aside.  Tie those cores in a cheesecloth satchel with one star anise and 4 peppercorns.  I wanted to put whole cloves in here, but we don’t have any, so ground cloves just went right into the water.  (This may have been an advantage later to making a dark-hued syrup.)

Boil your liquid: mine started with about 1/3 cup of quince syrup that was left over after I finished eating the preserved quinces, some water (about 2 cups? I just used the jar my preserved quinces had been in), and a few generous dashes of ground cloves.

While that was heating, I peeled, cored, and diced 1 bartlett and 1 anjou pear.  I would have liked to use firmer pears so they would keep their form, but I salvaged these from the store before leaving because they were destined for la poubelle.

I added the quinces and shallots to the boiling water.  (Should have added sugar, too, but I forgot.)  Then I added 2 Tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.  I actually measured this!  I’m trying to learn how to use vinegar to bring out sweeter flavors, so I looked at the Gourmet recipe for that addition.  I boiled that mixture until the quinces were soft but still holding their shape well, felt like there would still be a bit of a crunch at the middle of each piece.  Then I added the cranberries and pears, stirred that up, and half-covered the pot.  At this point I remembered the sugar!  And I threw in about a cup of it.

After about 7 minutes, when the cranberries were almost all burst and soft, I strained out the fruit from the liquid and put the liquid back into the pot, keeping the heat medium to reduce it to a syrup.

Looking at the pot, I decided it wasn’t red enough, so I pulled out another bag of cranberries and added probably another 1 1/2 cups, along with another 1/4 cup of sugar or so.  I added those to the reducing syrupy liquid and boiled it briskly until it made about 2/3 cup.  Then I poured this over the strained out fruit, mixed it all together, and could wait only about 5 minutes before tasting!

Yum!  It was worth the tantalizing smells of cloves, then onions and fruit, then vinegar, then more fruit, and sugary syrup that filled my kitchen last night.  Deanna agrees.

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