Quince cheese

If, like me, you are now drowning in quince jelly (this is not a bad thing, per se, given that it makes a great gift and will keep in its jar for years), you may be looking for something else to do with your excess quinces. I know my parents have a whole stable filled with them, lined up neatly in cardboard crates. Like apples, the fruits will keep well in a cool, dry and dark place - check on them regularly as you would with apples though, because once one goes bad the rest will soon follow unless you remove it and throw it away immediately.

Membrillo, or quince cheese, is something you may have spotted on fashionable cheeseboards. It's not a cheese at all, but a lovely heavy, sweet gel made from the flesh of the quince boiled down with sugar. It's a wonderful contrast to salty cheeses like manchego - one of my favourite midnight snacks is simply a hunk sawn off the end of the piece of parmesan that's always in the fridge, nibbled with a spoonful of quince cheese. When your quince cheese is ready, it will keep almost indefinitely in the fridge. I preserve mine in jars and spoon out chunks - some people prefer to make it in moulds, chill the moulds and turn the finished membrillo out when cold, then keep the pretty blocks wrapped in greaseproof paper and tin foil.

You'll need:

3 lb quinces
1 lemon
Granulated sugar (see below for measurements)
Water

Peel and core the quinces and cut them into chunks. Quinces are an abominably tough fruit to work with, so make sure your knife is extremely sharp and be sure to protect your fingers from slips. Put the quince pieces in a large saucepan and cover with water, cover with the lid, then simmer very gently for around three hours until the fruit is soft when poked with a fork. It will have turned a lovely lipstick pink.

Drain the pieces and weigh them, and measure out an equal weight of sugar. Put the quince pieces in the food processor and blitz until you have a paste, then combine the paste with the sugar and the juice and zest of the lemon in a saucepan with a thick bottom (an enamelled cast-iron pan like one from Le Creuset is really useful here). Simmer the mixture over a very, very low flame, stirring until the sugar has all dissolved in the quince paste. Continue to simmer gently without a lid, stirring every now and then to make sure the bottom does not catch, for about two hours, until the paste is a deep red-brown and your spoon will stand up in it.

Spoon the quince cheese into sterilised jars and cover the top with a waxed disc before you put the lid on. The jars will keep in the cupboard pretty much indefinitely, but will need to be refrigerated once opened.

Chicken with cardamom and preserved lemons

Remember those Moroccan preserved lemons from a few months back? They turned out very nicely indeed - salty, zingy skins infused with the scents of the spices in the jar. One of the spices I used in the preserved lemons was cardamom, and I've used more in this dish; along with the lemons and some flowery olive oil, it lifts and brightens the flavour of this chicken dish. Pure sunshine in a bowl - and that's just what I feel like in dismal October. Be sure when choosing your ingredients that you use an olive oil with a good flavour.

I've used a box of the tiny fillets (sometimes called chicken tenders) you'll find to one side of a chicken breast here. They're a very easy piece of meat to work with if you're in a hurry - no skinning or chopping necessary. To serve two, you'll need:

450g chicken fillet pieces
3 shallots
3 tablespoons polenta or cornmeal
8 cardamom pods
1 preserved lemon
4 tablespoons good extra-virgin olive oil
1 handful parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper

Start by scraping the pulp out of the inside of the preserved lemon (the pulp of these is too salty to eat). Dice the skin and pour over three tablespoons of the olive oil, then set aside while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Slice the shallots very finely and put them in a large bowl with the chicken. Bash the cardamom pods lightly in a mortar and pestle to crack their tough skins, then use the back of a teaspoon or a fingernail to get all the seeds out. Discard the empty pods and crush the seeds in the mortar and pestle. Mix the cardamom seeds, polenta and some salt and pepper, then sprinkle evenly over the chicken and shallots and mix well.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a large sauté pan over a high flame. Tip in all the chicken mixture and sauté until crisp and brown. Remove the chicken and crispy shallots to a clean bowl and pour over the lemon and oil mixture and some parsley, tossing like a salad to mix. Serve immediately.

Preserved lemons

I have been having some very good dreams recently about those sweetbreads with preserved lemon I ate a couple of weeks ago at Moro. Although sweetbreads are pretty hard to find round here, Moroccan preserved lemons are not - you can buy Belazu's very good lemons at the supermarket, or make your own. I chose to make my own, because making preserves gives me a self-righteous glow and something nice to display in the kitchen.

This is a really easy preserve to make, largely because it involves no cooking. The lemons are preserved in salt and their own tart juices, with spices and herbs tucked in between. Once ready, the rinsed lemons' skins can be used as a condiment, and their pulp and juice as a seasoning. To fill a sterilised 1.5 litre jar, you'll need:

About 15 unwaxed lemons (buy a few extra in case you need the juice)
500g coarse salt
2 bay leaves
3 cardamom pods
10 coriander seeds
3 dried chillies
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves

Begin by making a 2 cm layer of salt at the bottom of the jar, and dropping a couple of the whole spices in it. Take a lemon and cut the top and the bottom off. Make as if you are going to cut the lemon in half from top to bottom, but don't cut through the last 1 cm of flesh and skin. Turn the lemon upside down and make another cut from top to bottom, as if you were going to quarter the fruit, again not cutting all the way through. You'll end up with a lemon with two top-to-bottom slits in it. Holding the fruit above the neck of the jar, stuff each slit with as much salt as you can fit in, then drop it into the jar, pushing it firmly into a corner.

Continue filling your lemons with salt and packing them firmly into the jar, sprinkling salt and spices between them as you go. You'll notice that the juice from the squashed lemons will begin to cover the fruits as you work. When you have packed as many lemons into the jar as will fit, squeeze over fresh lemon juice until the top lemon is at least 1 cm deep in the preserving liquid.

Put the lid on tightly and leave the lemons in a warm place (the kitchen worksurface will do just fine) for six weeks, shaking the jar gently every day to mix the ingredients. The lemons, once ready, do not need to be refrigerated, and will keep indefinitely - if, once you start using them, the liquid no longer covers all the lemons, just add more salt and lemon juice.

Slow-roasted tomatoes

The recent glut of tomato recipes (the result of a glut of tomatoes) should end with this one, I hope; semi-preserving tomatoes by roasting all the moisture out of them and marinading in olive oil produces something so good that I think I'll be roasting all my future tomatoes too this year. It's a good method for dealing with large number of tomatoes, because when cooked in this way they reduce in volume so dramatically. The few pounds of raw tomatoes I cooked here resulted in about a jam-jar full of finished tomatoes.

Imagine how a tomato might taste if it was twenty feet tall and made of sunlight shining through a piece of red stained glass. Slow-roasting will transform your garden tomatoes into Platonic tomatoes of perfection, more tomato-ish than the juiciest tomato salad. The long, long cooking shrinks the tomatoes, concentrating their flavour - your whole house will smell of sunshine. Start this recipe in the morning; you need to keep the tomatoes in the oven for about seven hours. There's very little actual work involved, though; once your tomatoes are cooking, you can forget about them for the day.

My tomatoes were the cherry-sized Tumbler. If you have a larger variety, you will need to cook them for longer. You're aiming for a texture which is not quite dry, but not juicy. Test your tomatoes every half hour or so after seven hours to check for texture. (Try not to eat them all while you test. It's quite a challenge.)

For one tray of tomatoes you'll need:

Tomatoes, halved, to cover baking tray (about 2lb of cherry-sized tomatoes)
2 pinches caster sugar
1 level tablespoon dried oregano
2 large pinches salt
A generous amount of pepper
Olive oil to drizzle

Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer, cut sides up, on a baking tray. Sprinkle over all the dry ingredients evenly, and drizzle olive oil over the cut surfaces. Make sure you use plenty of freshly ground black pepper, which will help the tomatoes' flavour sing.

Place in a low oven (100° C - you are aiming to dry rather than cook) for seven hours until the tomatoes are no longer juicy. Pack them with their oil into a jar, top up with some more olive oil and seal. Add half a clove of grated garlic to the jar if you want even more flavour to your tomatoes. The tomatoes will keep in the fridge for up to a week, but since you are unlikely to be able to open the fridge without being tempted to eat a spoonful in that time, they probably won't be around for long enough for you to find out.

Elderflower cordial

I love cooking at this time of year. Ingredients are quite literally falling out of the trees into my always-ready pan. Elderflower cordial, diluted with still or sparkling water, is the quintessential English summer drink. It's also fantastic in many desserts with gooseberries; try adding some to the mixture next time you make gooseberry fool. It's got savoury applications too, and is good in a chicken marinade.

I've recently discovered a very good Martini made with gin (Hendricks for preference), elderflower cordial, lemon zest and lots of ice. This recipe will make you plenty of cordial, so you'll be able to experiment with it in cooking and cocktails all you like. It's also joyously cheap, especially when compared with the cordial you buy in the supermarket.

Elder bushes are in flower in June, and you'll see them all over the place, their flat, white flower heads on display. (You can also cook the flowers in fritters for a delicious dessert.) Pick, if at all possible, away from roads. Be careful that the flower heads you pick are fully open, but not starting to go brown; the plate-like head should not lose any flowers when shaken. Don't take too many flowers from any one bush. You'll want some in place to make elderberry and apple pie later in the year. Make the cordial as soon as you get home. The flowers lose their freshness quickly, even in the fridge, and start to smell like nothing so much as a horny tom cat. (Don't let that put you off; the cordial itself tastes and smells ambrosial.)

To make around 2.5 litres of cordial, you'll need:

2.5 kg sugar
35 elderflower heads (the plate-shaped mass of flowers)
2 litres water
3 lemons
100g citric acid

Put the sugar and water into a large pan, and slowly bring up to the boil, stirring now and then.

While the pan is coming up to temperature, remove the zest from the lemons and place it in a large bowl (big enough for all the ingredients) or a large pan. Slice each lemon into four and put the slices in the bowl with the zest and the elderflowers. Don't wash the elderflowers, but do check there aren't any little creatures living in among them.

When the sugar/water mixture is boiling, stir it to make sure all the sugar is dissolved, and take it off the heat. (It will be disgustingly hot. Be careful.) Use a ladle to pour the sugar syrup over the elderflowers and lemon. When all the syrup is in the bowl, stir in the citric acid and cover with a teatowel (or the lid if you are using a pan).

A note of warning - citric acid has, for some reason, been very hard to get hold of this year. Most chemists should carry it, and brewing supply shops and Indian supermarkets will also sell you packets. The chemists I spoke to this year said that the suppliers have had a problem, and this certainly seemed to be the case; I only found some in my fifth chemist. You need the citric acid as a preservative, so don't try to make this without it. Tartaric acid (not cream of tartar) can be used instead. (**Update** When making my 2007 batch, I gave up on trolling around all the chemists in Cambridgeshire and ordered the citric acid online from Edict Chemicals, where it's very inexpensive. Take a look - they've got some interesting food and household ingredients on offer.)

Leave the flowers to steep in the syrup overnight. Strain the resulting mixture through a square of muslin in a sieve the next day, and bottle with tight stoppers. This keeps well (especially in the fridge), but just to be sure, I like to freeze some for Christmas, when we all need to be reminded that there is a sun that's not watery, and that the sky is sometimes blue. Drink deeply. It's good stuff.

Quince Jelly

I didn't make any quince jelly last year; the quinces on the tree at my Mum's house came ripe and then dropped off while I was busy getting married and going on honeymoon. This was an ill-considered piece of timing on my part, and resulted in a year of married bliss with no quince jelly. Catastrophe. This needed putting right before we found each other weak and snappish at the lack of sugar, our marriage under intolerable, hypoglycaemic strain.

Quinces are a lot like a large pear in appearance; they're also covered with a soft, furry down. They smell extremely fragrant, but they're not edible raw; a raw quince is very hard, astringent and bitter. Cooked, however, they change in character completely. They lose their golden-yellow colour and their tart taste, and become pinkish, soft and intensely scented.

When I make quince jelly, I follow Mrs Beeton's recipe. (There are only a very few of Mrs Beeton's recipes I would happily cook from, but her preserves are usually excellent, and, of course, preserving was much more important to the refrigerator-free Victorians than it is to us.) It's very simple - all you need is quinces, water and sugar. She says:

INGREDIENTS - To every pint of juice allow 1 lb. of loaf sugar.

Mode - Pare and slice the quinces, and put them into a preserving-pan with sufficient water to float them. Boil them until tender, and the fruit is reduced to a pulp; strain off the clear juice, and to each pint allow the above proportion of loaf sugar. Boil the juice and sugar together for about 3/4 hour; remove all the scum as it rises, and, when the jelly appears firm when a little is poured on a plate, it is done. The residue left on the sieve will answer to make a common marmalade, for immediate use, by boiling it with 1/2 lb. of common sugar to every lb. of pulp. Time - 3 hours to boil the quinces in water; 3/4 hour to boil the jelly.

(If you prefer metric measurements, use 600ml of juice to every 450g of sugar.)

Quinces are, as I mentioned above, absolutely rock-hard. I sharpened my big cook's knife until it had an edge that would put a samurai sword to shame, and started to lay about the quinces, helping the task along by imagining the faces of countless enemies on each one. (I bear grudges for decades. It provides me with excellent chopping-fuel.)

Ripe quinces often have small brown patches inside, as in this picture (they'll get browner as they sit in your pan and the oxygen gets to them, too). Don't worry. It doesn't mean your quince is bad. My Mum, who taught me to make this, always insisted that it's important that you leave the seeds in, but I do wonder whether she's confusing quinces with citrus fruits, where the seeds are important in jam-making for the pectin, the enzyme which makes the jam gel properly. I give her the benefit of the doubt and leave them in anyway. I also deviate a little from Mrs Beeton here; I don't pare (peel) the quinces, having discovered a few years ago that it doesn't make any difference to the finished jelly; you'll want to peel them if you intend on making the marmalade (quince cheese) that she mentions, but I'm not intending on doing that; there's little enough room in my cupboards as it is.

About twenty chopped quinces fill my two largest Le Creuset pans. I've plonked my knife and an apple between the pans so you can get an idea of scale - these pans are 26 and 28cm in diameter - this is a lot of chopped quince. The largest pan (the blue one) needs about three litres of water to fill it enough to make the quince bits bob about merrily, the orange pan about two and a half. Simmering for three hours will reduce the quince to a pulp in a gorgeously pink juice, and will scent your whole house with a honeyed, fruity perfume.

I used to strain jellies by lining a sieve with butter muslin and balancing it precariously on top of the bowl I was straining the jelly into. This year I have seen sense and bought a proper jelly bag from Lakeland. I'm not impressed; the metal stand is coated with red plastic, but the plastic is flaking off the ring around the top as if it's got a particularly nasty skin disease. I need to be careful that none of it ends up in the jelly.

The bowl I want to strain into is too big for the stand. It has to balance on it precariously. My hairy-handed sous chef, Mr Weasel, will need to hold it steady when I put the pulp in the bag.

Quinces contain enough pectin to gel naturally, but the set you get from quince-pectin alone is quite soft. I prefer a harder set, so I use jam sugar, which comes with pectin already added.

The orange pan yields five pints of juice, the blue one six. Bugger, that's a lot. I don't have enough jam jars. Today's most shocking discovery is that it's cheaper to buy Tesco Value marmalade and throw it away (31p per jar - and this is difficult, because throwing perfectly good food away makes me feel physically ill - but what do you do with six lb of jarless, cheap jam?) than it was to buy my pristine jars and lids from Lakeland (about 50p, including the lid, which has to be bought separately). Mr Weasel, craving jelly, drives to Tesco and buys six jars of sacrificial marmalade.

After 45 minutes of simmering (with no lid), 22lb (10 kilos) of quince jelly is ready to go into the sterilised jars. This should be enough to go on crumpets, accompany and glaze roast lambs, drizzle over blue cheeses and make presents for the neighbours until next autumn.

Sweet recipes

Battenburg cake
Blondies
Brandysnaps
Butterfly cakes
Canteloupe and winter melon ice cream
Carrot cake
Chocolate brownies
Chocolate cornflake cakes
Chocolate fondue
Chocolate fudge cake
Chocolate puddle pudding
Chocolate truffles
Cinder toffee
Coconut ice
Coffee ice cream 1
Coffee ice cream 2
Currant cakes
Elderflower fritters
Hokey pokey ice cream
Lemon drizzle cake
Lemon raspberry cake
Panna cotta
Peanut cookie drops with fleur de sel
Pepper-hot apple cake
Pineapple upside-down cake
Pink fairy cakes
Quince cheese
Quince jelly
Raspberry custard cake
Raspberry Eton mess
Raspberry lemon sponge cake
Rhubarb cheese cake
Sticky toffee pudding
Toffee apples
Turkish delight