Tuesday the first: On quinces

I have three quinces:

 My mother bought me one (she knows how to treat me), and then promptly found a quince tree, so picked a couple more. There are two things that should be done with quinces; quince jelly, or quine jelly as it is known in our family after a mislabelling incident on my part once upon a time; and membrillo, or quince cheese (a much denser jelly thing).

Now, some people will tell you that you can make membrillo and quine jelly from the same quince, by extracting the juice in the same way as for apple jelly (cook till soft with some water, strain overnight to extract juice) and then seiving and cooking down the mush that's left. I happen to think that doing this means a much less tasty membrillo, as so much of the flavour gets sent off into the juice/jelly. So, here's my own franken-recipe, made up from bits and bobs of other recipes:

Membrillo

Ingredients:
Quinces
Granulated sugar (approximately 200g per quince, less if they are small)

NB: If you pot the membrillo in ramekins, as I did, you'll need some waxed discs (like theseones).

Method:
1. Roughly chop the quinces into fairly small pieces - about 1cm cubed max is ideal (I did mine bigger, they had to cook for longer. Not very eco), pop into preserving pan or an ordinary saucepan (see here for my preserving essentials list) and simmer for absolutely ages until soft - this can take anything from 45 mins, if you're sensible and chop small, to 3 hours if you're stupid like me.

 2. Push the quinces through a nylon seive, using a spoon - you can be quite obsessive about this and end up with a tiny bit of almost dry pulp and some seeds, just carry on until your arm is tired!

 3. Measure the volume of juice/pulp and return it to the pan, adding 200g of sugar for every 500ml of liquid (you may need to increase or decrease this depending on the sweetness of your pulp - mine may have been ridiculously sweet quinces, as most recipes call for around 450g of sugar per 600ml). Sterilise some small ramekins and a jug.

4. Cook on a very gentle simmer until the mixture is very very thick. A spoon dragged through the mixture should leave a clear valley behind it that doesn't fill up immediately. 
5. Pot the membrillo into the ramekins and cover with waxed discs. If you're feeling particularly artistic you can cover the ramekins with a bit of fabric or coloured paper held on with a ribbon, or you can just cover them with cling film.

Please note: Be patient, the sieved pulp will need aaaaaages to cook down. If you are impatient, you will quite quickly produce half a dozen little ramekins of lovely, perfumed membillo, like this:

 and then you will need to return the whole lot to the pan and reboil it until it is even thicker. Grrrrr.