From Lecce and its environs, quince paste—a deeply bronzed jelly molded into plump squares and tucked inside wooden fruit boxes—is our favorite Puglian treasure to take back to Tuscany. Here follows a lovely sort of pudding made from quince that, though it offers a less-dense dose of the fruit, yields one with all its beautiful, apple-wine sort of autumn savor.
Ingredients
serves 6
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Step 2
Polish the quince with a soft cloth, removing their down and, in a shallow terra-cotta or enameled cast-iron casserole, roast the quince whole until they are soft and collapsing, their skins just bursting.
Step 3
Cool the quince only until they can be relieved comfortably of their skins and cores. Push the flesh through a sieve, transferring it to a saucepan with the brown sugar and the lemon juice and, over a lively flame, bring the ingredients rapidly to a boil, stirring all the while with a wooden spoon. Lower the flame and cook the quince, still stirring, for 5 minutes. Remove the quince from the flame and permit it to cool.
Step 4
Combine the rum and the cream and beat until it forms stiff peaks. Lighten the cooled quince puree with a third of the beaten cream, then gently fold the quince into the remaining cream.
Step 5
Turn the mousse out into a serving bowl, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and chill it for several hours—or as long as 24—before carrying it to table and spooning out the ambered, rosy fruit into small coffee cups. Sip hot spiced rum with it as we did one shivery autumn evening as close to the fire as we could sit in a rough little osteria in Locorotondo.
