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Quince and brown butter pastry tart

Quince and brown butter pastry tart recipe - For poached quince, bring sugar, spices and 1 litre water to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat.

By Lisa Featherby
  • 20 mins preparation
  • 3 hrs 30 mins cooking
  • Serves 8
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Quince and brown butter pastry tart
This unusual pastry, adapted from a recipe by Parisian pastry chef and cooking school teacher Paule Caillat, gives a lovely nutty, buttery result. Cook the quince longer for a more intense flavour and colour.

Ingredients

  • 200 gm chilled unsalted butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
  • 1 tbsp rosemary
  • 180 gm plain flour
  • 1 tbsp caster sugar
  • Vanilla ice-cream, to serve
Poached quince
  • 750 gm sugar
  • 1 small cinnamon quill
  • 1 star anise
  • 4 cloves
  • 3 quince (about 300gm each), peeled, cored and cut into wedges

Method

Main
  • 1
    For poached quince, bring sugar, spices and 1 litre water to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add quince, then cover directly with a round of baking paper and a small plate to keep quince submerged, reduce heat to very low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until quince is deep pink in colour (3 hours; cook longer for a deeper colour). Cool, then refrigerate quince in syrup until required. Poached quince can be made up to a week ahead.
  • 2
    Preheat oven to 175C. Heat a saucepan over high heat, add butter and cook until foaming and nut brown (3-4 minutes). Add rosemary (it should fry instantly), then strain butter through a metal sieve into a heatproof bowl. Return 110gm brown butter to pan, and return rosemary to remaining butter and set aside. Add 1 tbsp water to butter in pan (be careful, butter will spit) and bring to the boil. Add flour, sugar and a pinch of salt, remove from heat and stir to form a wet, oily dough. While warm, press dough evenly over base and sides of a 3cm-high, 20cm-diameter fluted, loose-bottomed tart tin and bake on an oven tray until golden brown and set (30-35 minutes). Remove from oven and cool completely for butter to firm up, then transfer pastry case to a plate.
  • 3
    Heat 1 tbsp rosemary butter in a frying pan over high heat, add quince and 60ml quince syrup (reserve remaining for another use) and cook, turning occasionally, until warmed through (3-4 minutes). Spoon quince into pastry case, top with ice-cream, drizzle with brown butter-rosemary syrup and serve warm.

Notes

Drink Suggestion: Sweet, apple-juicy pommeau Drink suggestion by Max Allen