FifteenLet us bring it back a bit.
There is a pile of quince in the kitchen, sitting comfortable in a brown paper bag, down at the bottom of the fridge. This is found fruit, pulled down from shaggy branches of bushes that live in an equally shaggy yard some miles away. I was given them in a sack, standing in a hallway, a simple hand off of fruit from friend to friend. I don't know of anything to do with them but make jelly.
I've been making some progress in that area, building on the success of the blueberry jam of last summer. This year, I and a friend have been able to put up into the pantry shelf several pints of wild black raspberry jam, deep purple and only just holding to itself. We were also able to come away with many little jars of sour cherry preserves, although those did not firm up as well. I hear tell the ancient world called it spoon fruit; the cherries have always been ornery about becoming set. I have blueberries in the freezer, but not yet, not yet: first I must deal with the quince.
The procedure here seems to be to first cut the fruit to bits, removing stem and seed (but save the pectin from the seed cases; they are loaded with pectin). Then: simmer the hell out of the things. Once done, they turn from green to the lovely amber I remember from the thin shelves against the cool wall of my Grandmother's basement. The recipes say to go after the fruit with a potato masher, then pour the glop into a jelly bag. Let gravity take its time: let the juice run out into a catch below. Squeezing the bag makes for cloudy jelly. Then: reheat the juice with sugar, heat up into a syrup, then jar and process. I might try the whole thing tomorrow; I have new gadgets and implements littering the kitchen, a small evil workshop there on the table, eager and ready to to generate villains that will enter combat with nut butter for supremacy of the entire sandwich. We will see how it goes.
I will say this, too, and I am somewhat looking forward to this part: there is little in the world as intoxicating as a big pot of slowly cooking fruit.
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