A Quince in Every Closet

Hard as wood, bulbous and swollen as a pear on steroids, a quince is a fruit only a farmer could love. And sometimes even they are ambivalent.

“Sometimes we tease that they don’t belong in the produce section of the grocery store but in the hardware section,” says Craig Kaprielian, a third-generation Fresno quince farmer.

In fact, Kaprielian swears that one of his favorite ways to eat quince is raw, a notion that is likely to shock many. Without cooking, even very ripe quince have a very drying, almost talcum-like quality.

“We get a lot of teasing about that, too,” says Kaprielian, “but there are a few of us around here who eat them raw. It does dry out your mouth a little bit, but the taste to me is very enjoyable.”

It’s a trick he learned from his grandmother. “Raw quince are extremely filling,” he says. “My grandmother used to always say that if you want to lose weight, eat a quince before the meal.”

Grandma Kaprielian also taught the family to stick a ripe quince in every closet. “It’s got a wonderful aroma that it will put off for five to six months,” Kaprielian says. “Typically, if it’s picked correctly, its shelf life is extreme. In the first place, it emits no ethylene [the ripening gas given off by bananas and apples]. Plus, it secretes an oil that seals itself off from dehydration.”

Normally, quince need to be poached in sugar syrup for as much as an hour to be what most of us would consider edible. But at that point, a quince is incomparable. Think of an apple or pear with a spicy cinnamon-and-clove perfume, colored a deep shade of rose.

Again, Kaprielian refers to Grandma. “She used to poach them and then make pie with them, like an apple pie,” he says. “I’ll tell you, once you’ve had a quince pie, there aren’t many apple pies that can compare.”

Kaprielian also raves about quince cooked by the culinary queen of Yosemite, Erna Kubin-Clanan of the famed restaurant Erna’s Elderberry House. “She calls us once a month during the season,” he says, “and we take her a couple boxes of fruit.”

If you don’t have a farmer delivering quince to your door, the way to pick a really ripe quince is to look for a pale lemon color. If you’re buying them at the store, they should be completely smooth-shaven. Quince naturally are covered with a downy fuzz--they look like a cross between a peach and a pear. After they’re picked, farmers run them through a de-fuzzer. Underripe quince don’t de-fuzz completely.

Underripe quince will ripen off the tree, albeit very slowly (good news for those who store them in closets). So if you get a greenish quince, just give it some time.

Quince can also be overripe. Twice this year, I’ve bought quince that were completely cooked in about 10 minutes, though they never changed color and they weren’t as vibrantly spicy as usual. You can tell an overripe quince, I’ve since learned, by pressing it with your thumb. If there’s any give, it’s too ripe.

*

Carolyn Olney of the Southland Farmers’ Market Assn. reports that Phil McGrath of Camarillo is selling exceptional Tahitian squash, a hard-shelled variety. He is at the Brentwood and Santa Monica markets Wednesday; Thousand Oaks and Westwood on Thursday; Northridge and Santa Barbara on Saturday; Beverly Hills, Encino, Channel Islands, Ojai and Hollywood on Sunday; and Agoura on Tuesday.