Marmalade

I thought I'd missed the Seville orange season, which only lasts for a couple of weeks and starts around the end of January. I'd gone to the market in Cambridge last week, only to find they'd run out. Happily, another box turned up on Saturday, so I snapped up a couple of kilos.

Seville oranges are an unprepossessing fruit, knobbly and scarred-looking, and very puny when held beside the majestic, sterile, navel oranges in the next crate. But Sevilles sell out quickly for a reason. They don't just make gloriously bitter, perfumed marmalade; they're also a wonderful addition to recipes anywhere you might use a lemon, with their tart, fragrant juice.

Making your own marmalade is time-consuming; you'll need to set the best part of a day aside for the project. It's worth the effort, though - and my realisation that 14 jars of amber, jewelled preserves only cost me £7 (£3 for the oranges, £4 for the sugar) has left me full of self-righteousness. It's also a great pleasure to be able to manage the recipe yourself so you can produce your preferred thickness of peel and syrupyness. I like a dense, thick-cut marmalade, of the sort that you just don't seem to be able to buy these days. (So does my lovely Dad, whose name is on several of these jars.) A home-made marmalade, as you'll know if you've ever had one, is much, much tastier than the shop-bought version. I am a purist when it comes to marmalade, and believe it tastes its best when it's made with Seville oranges, sugar and nothing else. You'll find no additions of grapefruit, whisky or ginger here - if you want whisky with your marmalade, pour yourself an accompanying glass.

Two kilos of fruit will produce about 14 jars of marmalade. Split the mixture between large pans if you don't have a big jam pan (if you make a lot of preserves, a jam pan is a worthwhile investment). You'll need:

2kg Seville oranges
3.5 litres water
4kg sugar

Get out your jam pan, and simmer the oranges in the water for 2 hours with a lid on. Remove the fruit from the liquid and slice the oranges in half. Use a fork (and a friend with a fork if you want to get this done quickly, because this is a somewhat tiresome job) to remove the seeds from the centre and put them in a bowl. Put the now seedless pulp from the oranges in another bowl with any juice.

Put all the seeds in a small pan, cover with water and boil vigorously to release the pectin in them for ten minutes while you prepare the skin.

You'll be left with a pile of orange-skin shells. Chop them by hand to your preferred width - some prefer a very finely shredded peel. I like whokking great chunks. Combine the chopped peel with the pulp and put it all back in the water you simmered the whole oranges in with the sugar. Strain the seeds out of the little pan and add the resulting liquid to the marmalade.

Bring the marmalade, stirring initially to dissolve the sugar, to a rolling boil, with the lid off. After 15 minutes, dollop a teaspoon onto a cold saucer. Blow on it until it is cool and give it a poke with a finger to test the set. It probably won't be ready yet - you're looking for a wrinkly surface skin and a lovely amber colour. Test every 15 minutes. When you judge the set to be right (50 minutes/1 hour usually seems to be about right for a thick cut; shredded skin will come ready earlier) remove the pan from the heat, skim any scum off with a slotted spoon to prevent cloudiness, and pour into sterilised jam jars.

Peach and papaya jam

Don't you hate it when the light starts slanting to remind you it's autumn? This recipe catches the last of the really summery peaches and preserves them with a sugary papaya so you can enjoy them in the dead of winter with toast. I'm blowing my own trumpet a bit here, but I was simply amazed at how good this combination is - this is an extraordinarily good jam, packed with peachy aroma and body.

It's nice here if you can find some white peaches (or nectarines) as well as some yellow ones. The fruit will be suspended in little chunks in the amber jam, and it's nice to have a little variety in colour to look at. Peaches and papaya aren't particularly rich in pectin, and they're very, very sweet, so there's less sugar here than you might expect; I have also added a supplementary apple with the juice of a lemon to add a little tartness and that all-important pectin for setting.

As with all jams, make sure you stir this constantly with a wooden spoon as it cooks to avoid burning the bottom of your pan. If you make a lot of jam (or even if you only make a bit), it's a really good idea to spend a few pounds on a jam thermometer rather than relying on the cold saucer method, where you drip a little jam onto a cold object to see whether it's setting properly.

To make about 2kg jam, you'll need:

1 ripe papaya
2 ripe yellow peaches
2 ripe white peaches
1 small, tart apple
Juice of 1 lemon
Sugar (you'll need to work out the weight - see below)

Sterilise some jars and a ladle.

Peel and seed the fruits. This is very easy with a peach - just quarter it and you should be able to peel the skin away with your fingers. Chop the flesh into chunks, being careful to reserve the juice. Weigh the fruit and any juice, and measure out some sugar weighing ¾ as much as the fruit. (In many jam recipes you'd use equal amounts of fruit and sugar, but these are very sweet fruits, and they don't need the help!)

Pour the fruit, the lemon juice and the sugar into a saucepan with a jam thermometer, and bring to 110°C (230°F). The faster you can get it to temperature, the better the colour of the fruit will be preserved. Ladle the hot jam into jars, topping with a wax disc if you like, and seal immediately.

Greengage jam

Summer's been a bit of a washout here, but it turns out that the hot start and wet middle and end of the season have meant that the plum harvest this year has been stupendous. (So has the wasp harvest, so be careful if you're collecting your own.) I don't have my own plum tree, but I've been scrumping plums from trees in a neighbour's garden across the green that overhang a footpath, eating them at friends' houses, and buying bushels of the things at the market.

Greengages are my favourite English plum. They're (surprise!) pale green, extraordinarily sweet, and wonderfully juicy, with golden flesh when ripe. Like Victoria plums, they're perfect for jam-making, keeping a lovely plummy fragrance when cooked down. They're very obliging fruits; they're full of pectin, so you won't need to add any setting agents to the jam; and you don't even need to stone them before cooking, as the stones will loosen themselves for you as the fruit cooks down, floating to the top of the jam so you can skim them off as they bob to the surface.

I like the pure plum flavour you get from this jam, but some people like to add a vanilla pod to the saucepan for some extra fragrance. For me, it's not the best use of an expensive pod; this jam just employs greengages, water and sugar, and it's none the worse for that. When selecting your greengages, try to find fruits which are ripe but not over-squishy, and reject any with bruises or mouldy bits, as this will affect the length of time your jam will keep once opened.

I find it hard to think about preserves (especially fruit ones) in terms of kilogrammes and litres, so I'm afraid you'll need to dig out the imperial weights for this one. To make jam from 2lb of ripe greengages, making about 3lb jam, you'll need:

2lb greengages
1½ lb granulated sugar
½ pint water

Sterilise some jars before you begin. Put the whole greengages and the water in a large pan, and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the fruits are very soft. Pour in the sugar, stir well and simmer hard, fishing out the stones as they bob to the surface, until the mixture reaches a jam set (it should measure 110°C on a jam thermometer; if you don't have one, just dribble a bit of the jam onto a cold saucer and check that it's reached a jammy texture). Skim any scum off the surface and pour into the sterilised jars, sealing immediately.

This is, of course, gorgeous on toast, crumpets or a croissant; my favourite thing to do with this jam is to dollop a big tablespoonful into the middle of a bowl of plain yoghurt for breakfast.

Pork rillettes

Dr W pitched up with two kilos of pork belly a few weeks ago, having spotted it on offer at the butcher's. If you're familiar with this blog, you'll know that there are plenty of options here for cooking this particular cut - it's one of my favourites. Mind you, who wants to roast or casserole in this weather? Time to experiment with some charcuterie.

Rillettes (pronounced ree-etts) are a kind of coarse pate, made from gently cured meat poached in stock and its own fat (and, in this case, some fat from a duck) for hours until it becomes soft, falling into shreds. The fat is there to carry the flavour to the tastebuds, to provide some really world-beating texture, and as a preservative; once you've sealed your rillettes into sterilised jars, covered with a layer of the creamy fat, nothing will be able to get in there, so you'll be able to store them in the fridge for months. I'd recommend, in fact, that you don't eat your rillettes as soon as you've made them if you can possibly help it; a week or so in a jar will allow the flavours to develop fully.

Traditionalists will tell you to cure your meat with nothing but salt and pepper before cooking, and to avoid adding extra flavourings to the meat as you poach it. Traditionalists are, in my experience, a bloody miserable lot. My brother (currently right off pork, as he recovers slowly from swine flu) makes spectacular rillettes at Christmas, which he packs with lots of crushed juniper berries. I like mine garlicky and boozy, with plenty of aroma from a generous scattering of herbes de Provence, and some bay, lavender and thyme from the garden. To make your own (reduce the amounts if you want, but this keeps very well and makes an excellent gift - given that it's mildly fiddly, you'll be rewarded for making a large batch), you'll need:

2kg pork belly
1kg pork shoulder
2 bulbs garlic
2 heaped tablespoons herbes de Provence
2 tablespoons salt
6 fresh bay leaves
1 small handful (20g) thyme
1 small handful (20g) lavender leaves
750g rendered pork fat (I used duck fat from the confit I made earlier this year - you can also substitute goose fat here)
2 glasses white wine
Pork stock or water

Cut the pork (leaving the skin on the belly) into long strips about 1 inch square, and put it in a large mixing bowl. In a mortar and pestle, grind the salt, bay, thyme, lavender and herbes de Provence together. Rub the resulting mixture all over the strips of meat, cover and refrigerate for 48 hours. Curing the meat like this before cooking (you'll notice that the confit the duck fat came from was cured in a similar way) gives it what the French call a goût de confit - a very specific and delicious flavour you only really find in confited meats.

When the meat has cured, chop the strips, retaining the belly skin, into smaller pieces, about the size of your thumb. Put the meat and any salt and herbs from the bowl in a large casserole dish with the unpeeled garlic bulbs, chopped in half across their equators, and pour over the wine. Carefully pour over stock (I happened to have some pork stock in the freezer, but if you don't, don't worry about it - water will be fine) until it barely covers the meat, then spoon the rendered fat into the casserole dish. Heat the oven to 150°C and bring the casserole dish to a very gentle simmer on top of the stove. Pop it into the oven with the lid on and ignore it for five hours.

Remove the casserole from the oven and remove the meat and garlic from the liquid ingredients with a slotted spoon, putting them in a large mixing bowl. Leave the liquid in the casserole to stand and separate while you work on the meat.

When the meat is cool enough to handle, use your fingers to remove the skin from the belly pieces and discard it - it's done its work now and will have given up its gelatin to the cooking liquid, which you'll be using in a bit. Shred the meat (now lovely and soft, with all the fat rendered out) into another bowl, and squeeze the garlic from its skin into the bowl of shredded meat, discarding the skin. When all the meat is shredded evenly, use a ladle to skim all the fat from the liquid in the casserole, and put it in a jug. You'll be left with a glossy stock in the pan. Stir two or three ladles-worth of the stock into the shredded meat to moisten it, and pop the rest of the stock in the freezer for another day. Now ladle the liquid fat into the shredded meat bowl and mix everything in the bowl thoroughly and evenly, reserving a couple of ladles of fat to cover the rillettes in their jars. (Exactly how much you'll need depends on the size of jar you're using.) Taste the contents of the bowl for seasoning - this recipe benefits from some robust salting.

Pack the rillettes into sterilised jars, leaving half an inch of room at the top of each one for the fat you'll seal them with. (I also popped some in a terrine dish for serving to friends later in the week.) Pour fat into each jar/dish to cover, seal, and refrigerate until you come to eat them. I like to let the rillettes come to room temperature before spreading them on chunks of baguette, with some caper berries and cornichons on the side to cut through the velvety fat.

Duck confit

Confit de canard, the French way with duck which is cooked and preserved in its own fat, is unequivocally delicious. French tins of the stuff are scrumptious, and although pricey, not too hard to get hold of. But making your own at home turns out to be surprisingly easy, and it tastes even better than the store-bought variety (the magic is all in the herbs you use to cure the duck before cooking). Making your own also means that even when you've finished eating, you end up with lots of herby, aromatic duck fat to use in potato dishes, or even in another confit.

Because the meat is simmered very gently under duck fat, it remains extremely moist and tender, with a skin that crisps up deliciously at the click of a finger. I like mine served, totally unhealthily, with a great big heap of pommes Sarladais and a dollop of quince jelly. Redcurrant, cherry and the other duck-friendly fruits also work really well to cut through the richness of the confit.

To confit six duck legs (with thigh attached) you'll need:

6 duck leg joints, with thigh
3 heaped teaspoons salt
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
1 tablespoon herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
Duck fat (enough to completely cover the duck legs when melted in a saucepan)

Crush the bay leaves, thyme, herbes de Provence and peppercorns very thoroughly with the salt in a mortar and pestle, and rub the pieces of duck all over with the mixture. Put the duck in a large bowl and refrigerate for 48 hours to achieve a very mild cure.

When you are ready to cook the duck, heat the oven to 150°C and melt the fat in an oven-proof casserole dish on the hob. Slide the duck into the fat as it liquefies, and when it starts to shudder (not boil), move the casserole to the oven. Cook for two and a half hours, or until the duck is tender.

Spoon the cooked duck and its hot fat into a large sterilised jar or crockpot, making sure that the meat is completely covered by the fat, which will stop oxygen and bacteria getting in. Seal and refrigerate. The duck will keep for a few weeks in the fridge (it is, after all, preserved) - it will also be tender, sweet and moist from being poached in that fat.

It's worth leaving the duck in the fat for a few days before you eat it, in order to allow the flavours to develop. To serve and cook to a crisp, remove the confit from the fat and fry over a medium heat in a saucepan for about 7 minutes per side, with a heavy pan lid weighing the meat down as you fry.

Lemon curd

Have you ever had one of those days when you've suddenly noticed that you've accidentally bought fifteen lemons? I had one of those on Friday, and decided to use the lemons life had given me to make some lemonade. (Dead easy - maple syrup and lemon juice in iced water to taste.) There were still lemons left over. I decided to test one of the heavy pans in the new Le Creuset Satin Black glaze that Dr W (the wonderful, thoughtful Dr W) bought me for my birthday; they promise to be good at distributing a very slow, even heat. Perfect for lemon curd.

If you're lucky enough to be able to get your hands on American Meyer lemons (a superbly lemonsome lemon) or thick-skinned, aromatic Sicilian lemons, you should immediately drop everything else you're doing and use them to make curd. It's a wonderful part of the English nursery tea - try it as a spread on some good, crusty toast, along with a cup of Earl Grey tea. The aromatic lemon zest in the curd and the bergamot in the tea are perfect partners.

You probably have all the ingredients you need to make lemon curd in the house already (although Meyer or Sicilian lemons are best, any unwaxed lemon will make a delicious curd), and it's very quick - it should only take you about 40 minutes, at most, from the time you start to zest your lemons to the satisfying moment when you ladle the lovely primrose goo into jars. Home-made lemon curd is a million times nicer than the shop-bought stuff, and lasts for about six weeks in the fridge. To make about 1.25 kg of lemon curd, you'll need:

4 lemons
4 large eggs
350g caster sugar
250g butter
2 teaspoons cornflour

Start by breaking the eggs into a heavy saucepan away from the heat. Beat the eggs thoroughly with a balloon whisk. Tip the grated zest and juice of the lemons over the eggs with the sugar, the butter, cut into tiny cubes, and the cornflour. (Strictly speaking, the cornflour is a cheat's ingredient - it doesn't add any flavour, and all the thickening comes from the eggs, but the cornflour provides a guarantee that your curd will not curdle. I've never had a lemon curd go wrong with a small addition of cornflour.)

Put the saucepan over a medium/low heat, and start to go at it with a balloon whisk. Whisk constantly until the butter has all melted. After another eight minutes or so of hard whisking, the curd will start to thicken. Turn the heat down to its minimum and keep on whisking, making sure you get into every corner of the pan, for another three minutes or so, until the curd is deliciously thick (it will continue to thicken as it cools down). Ladle immediately into sterilised jars and refrigerate once cool.

Mexican pickled red onions

These crisp, pink onions are a traditional Yucatan accompaniment for cochinita pibil, and oh, my beating heart, they're good. Red onions are par-boiled very briefly, then semi-preserved in a citrus, sugar and salt mixture spiked with chillies and cumin. They'll keep in the fridge for up to a month, which is good, good news, because besides being a perfectly pitched addition to a taco, these are one of the best accompaniments for strong cheeses I've come across. (Try some alongside a Stilton or some Gorgonzola.) They're great to look at, too; the acid in the preserving mixture turns the red onion, which acts as a universal indicator, a really vibrant pink.

I've used a little home-made habanero vinegar in the preserving mixture. It's a particularly delicious vinegar (and very easy - just steep a few whole habaneros in a bottle of white wine vinegar for a couple of weeks) - it picks up all the citrusy, fruity undertones of the habaneros and packs plenty of heat.

To make a large bowl of Barbie-toned pickled onions, you'll need:

2 medium red onions
Juice of 1 orange
Juice of 3 limes
Juice of 2 lemons
2 tablespoons habanero vinegar (white wine vinegar in which you've steeped a few habanero chillies for a week or so - see above)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon sea salt
1½ tablespoons caster sugar

Halve the onions, and cut into slices. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and drop in the onion slices. Count to twenty and drain the onions, and set aside in a large bowl.

Stir the citrus juices, vinegar, cumin, salt and sugar together in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar and salt has dissolved. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove it from the heat and pour it over the onions. Cover the bowl and refrigerate until cold (a couple of hours).

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

Baked apple pudding (Mrs Charles Darwin's recipe)
Battenburg cake
Blondies
Brandysnaps
Butterfly cakes
Calas - breakfast rice fritters
Canteloupe and winter melon ice cream
Carrot cake
Cherry-marzipan cookies
Chilli choc chip cookies
Chocolate brownies
Chocolate cornflake cakes
Chocolate fondue
Chocolate fudge cake
Chocolate orange fairy cakes
Chocolate puddle pudding
Chocolate truffles
Cinder toffee
Coconut ice
Coffee ice cream 1
Coffee ice cream 2
Currant cakes
Elderflower fritters
English pancakes
Flapjacks
Fruit scones
Gingerbread
Hokey pokey ice cream
Hot cross buns
Iced sugar cookies
Lemon curd
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
Pouding chomeur
Quince cheese
Quince jelly
Raspberry custard cake
Raspberry Eton mess
Raspberry lemon sponge cake
Rhubarb cheese cake
Rhubarb crumble with proper custard
Sticky toffee pudding
Toffee apples
Turkish delight