Quince Hand Pies in the Old Town

5+ weeks away in the Greek Islands, I have much to share in the way of imagery both work and personal.

Overall, I very purposely had two goals. One was to unplug as much as humanly possible, and the second was to document as much beauty as humanly possible, which included my passion – food photography narratives. However, not the styled, story-boarded, shop for hand selected props kind of food photography. Instead, these narratives are all about the beautifully authentic ‘as is, the what was available to use, and the how I found it or what I magically came upon’ kind of food photography. To be honest, it’s my favorite kind of documenting, and the way I have NOT been shooting for the better part of 2 or more years. I will tell you it was beautifully revitalizing…

Let’s start with these Quince Hand Pies.

One day while visiting the Greek island of Patmos… I strolled along a twisted, cobbled village street leading to the ocean admiring all of the pomegranate trees literally bursting with ripe ruby orbs (anther post on those soon) while also lamenting that we had missed fig season, as there were also scores of lush (sans fig) shrubs everywhere.
There was one tree/shrub that I initially thought was some variety of an apple tree, but as I got closer, I could tell the hanging fruit were not apples, or pears.
Later,  showed my mom a photo and she told me what they were in Greek .. κυδωνιά .. QUINCE!
How is it that I did not know this, or have never made anything with quince. It’s not as if this fruit isn’t available in the states, yet, it was true.

After returning back to Rodos, I researched how to cook with quince and then used my trusted pie recipe, but fashioned it into hand pies. I love hand pies.
I used my, and you can use yours, favorite pie recipe, both dough and filling, cut out rounds, added a spoonful of filling, fold over and seal. I added chopped up almonds and rosemary, and a smear of apricot jam before adding the quince filling.
First was a quick poach to soften up the fruit, as it’s quite hard and wouldn’t have adequately broken down in the relatively short amount of time baking in the oven.
Then, in my mom’s tiny kitchen, without the usual baking necessities (aka – my mom is not a baker) I made Quince Rosemary Honey and Almond Hand Pies.
Come along as I share what it really looks like to create food in so many kitchens in Greece – nothing fancy or staged – and then of course sharing them with our neighbor Leftería.