This evening Noel and I made some quince ratafia. We used a recipe I found online, which is always a crapshoot. The idea is pretty simple: you shred some quince, stuff it in a quart mason jar, and add sugar and spices (we added cinnamon and ginger; the recipe called for mace but we didn't have any), cover with vodka or brandy and let it sit for a couple of months.
We tried a few variations on the recipe: with vodka, with brandy, one jar with both, and then finally a few jars with shredded quince and rum (leaving out the sugar and spices on the theory that rum has quite a nice flavour of its own to impart). The jars are now nestled in the fridge infusing away.
This is all in an attempt to use up the last of the quince, of course. We're really not very big drinkers, and when we do drink it's usually a glass of wine rather than hard liquor. So the fact that we have twelve quart jars full of liquor is kind of amusing.
When we got the quart jars, we also got some half-pints, so I'll be spending some time very soon making quince jelly, as well. Or anything to use up the rest of the quince, which have been sitting in a bucket in the dining room for months now.
