Black-eyed Pea Soup (Gluten Free)

Black-eyed Pea Soup, from the great state of Louisiana, was executed by a guest cook on the blog, notably my husband Bob. I planned to have the soup for Wednesday night supper. Lately, Bob has been cooking on Wednesday nights because I have been hauling up to the Democratic National Committee on Capitol Hill to make calls for Terry McAuliffe, who as of today is the new Governor elect of Virginia. (The Berkshire Farmer buffs her fingernails.) I suddenly remembered around lunchtime Wednesday afternoon that I had not started the black-eyed pea soup in the crock pot, and told Bob about it as I flew out the door.
To combat blandness, and , he confessed because he didn't read the recipe all the way through, Bob put the four slices of lemon that were supposed to be a garnish into the soup. The result was a piquant, lemon infused soup where the smokiness of the ham hock blended with the lemon flavor to produce something very nice indeed.
The recipe as written is supposed to be cooked on top of the stove, but 4 hours on high in the slow cooker produces the same result. He also did not soak the beans. I suspect that Monsanto or some other agribiz company has fiddled with the genetic make up of dried beans so we no longer have to soak them. Please note that this is only an opinion, not an accusation. I have no direct information about what Monsanto does or does not do.
So when I got home from a hard night of dialing the telephone numbers of Marylanders who were not home, or not answering their phones, we ate hot soup. (In case you are wondering why I would be calling residents of Maryland during a campaign to elect the governor of Virginia, we were combing the Obama lists for people to volunteer to knock on doors on Election Day.
By the way, black-eyed peas are actually beans, like kidney beans, and are eaten all over the world. 

Black Eyed Pea Soup

2 cups dried black-eyed peas
cold water
1 small ham hock (Ham hocks from Safeway are huge. As far as I am concerned, bigger is better here.)
4 cups boiling water
1 bay leaf
2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
1 onion, studded with two whole cloves
salt to taste
4 peppercorns
4 thin slices lemon
paprika
1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley

1. Soak the black-eyed peas over night in cold water to cover. Next day, drain and place in a two-quart kettle. Add the ham hock, boiling water, bay leaf, celery, onion, salt and peppercorns (and lemon slices )and bring to a boil. Cook until peas are tender, two and one half hours to three hours. As the soup cooks, skim the surface as necessary.
2. Remove the ham hock and bay leaf and puree the soup either through a sieve or in an electric blender.  Spoon into four hot soup plates and top each with a slice of lemon. Dot the center of each lemon slice with a little paprika and one-quarter teaspoon chopped parsley.

Venison Mincemeat

This year is looking to be a two mincemeat year, especially if I want to finally finish the Northeast section of the cookbook. On Thursday, finding myself with some extra time, I tackled venison mincemeat. The first goal was to locate the venison. Not a problem. In DC, venison is available at the Eastern Market, at the poultry purveyor across the aisle from Union Meat. A good blogger would have made a note of the name of the stall, but sad to say, I paid cash and don't have a record of the name. In 2012, a blogger reported that she bought ground venison at Lets Meats in Del Ray, a neighborhood of Alexandria, and that it was sometimes available at Wegman's.
One may also find venison on the Internet. www.brokenarrowranch.com  is one of several businesses which sell venison by mail. I have never ordered from them. I am merely passing on the information.
Anyhow, I bought a frozen, two pound slab for about $29, and toted it home to defrost it. The recipe calls for Northern Spy apples. Unfortunately, Homestead Farm in Poolesville doesn't have Northern Spies. I got Staymans, an apple that was described as a good cooking apple, with a thick skin.
The recipe envisions the cook using the leftover venison, the tough cuts. Well, those of us without farms or a hunter in the family to bring down your deer, are not going to have tough cuts. The venison I got was insanely tender, as though the deer it came off  had spent its entire career sitting in a lounge chair drinking mai tais and having massages.
In order to deal with the supposed toughness of the meat, the cook is ordered to boil it until it becomes tender. I followed these instructions, with mixed results. This is a problem with Hewitt's recipes. The author probably made venison mincemeat every fall, after deer season. She/he knew how much water it took to boil the meat, etc. I didn't know how much water to use. You might try just adding everything and then cooking it without the pre boiling and be very sparing with the water.
Initially, my mincemeat was more like soup and less like a pie filling that could be dished out in ice cream scoops. I ended up boiling it for three hours to bring down the water content. The result was not satisfying in texture. The apples had virtually disintegrated, and the raisins were huge. I ground the meat in the Cuisinart, which left it very fine. You might want to try to get the venison already ground for a better texture.

Venison Mincemeat

5 pounds tough cuts venison, very finely cut or diced 
1 tablespoon plus one-quarter teaspoon salt
4 pounds Northern Spy apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 cups cider, scalded
1 cup unsulphured molasses
2 cups honey
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 pound raisins
1 pint blackberry brandy

1. Cover the venison with cold water. Add one tablespoon salt. Let stand at room temperature two hours. Drain and place in a kettle.
2. Cover with fresh water.  Add remaining salt and the pepper and cook, covered, until meat is very tender.
3. Add the remaining ingredients except the brandy. Bring to a boil and simmer until apples are tender. Cool.
4. Add brandy, reheat almost to the boiling point and pack into hot sterilized  jars. Seal. Cool and store in a cool, dry, dark place for at  least one month before using. Makes eight quarts.

Amber Pie (Gluten Free)

Amber Pie, while definitely out there in Internet land, is variously defined as a Kentucky pie, a pie with raisins, and a pie that is good for all seasons. However, there does not seem to be any one writing about the origins of said pie. If I had to guess, I would say that it originated as a winter pie because it contains no fruit. The hens were still laying, the cook still had sugar and raisins and devised this pie, which came from Illinois.
Amber Pie is relatively quick, which is a feature that appeals to me in desserts these days. On Saturday, our friend Geoffrey and my brother George came to dinner. I got started late because I decided that the India Relish could not wait another day. I didn't get home from the grocery store until nearly 5:30 and had to hasten to get the pork roast on the barbecue. We don't grill for months at a time, but we decided to grill in honor of Geoffrey who paid 2,000 smackers for a mammoth item that grills, fries, steams and plays God Bless America, for all I know.
So I had to make the pie in between running in and out the door adding briquettes to the barbecue so we could eat before 10 o'clock. Like I said, it's fast. One does not have to spend half an hour or more stirring the ingredients over a double boiler and then chilling the result for four to five hours. It's mix, pour, bake. A meringue is spread on the cooled pie, which is then baked another 15 minutes.
 Meringues are actually pretty easy. You just beat egg whites with sugar until the egg whites are stiff. If you have never separated eggs or beaten egg whites, get a dozen eggs and practice. You can reintegrate the whites and yolks and use them for scrambled eggs. That way, if you get egg yolk in your egg whites, it really doesn't matter. If you want to practice beating egg whites, you cannot get egg yolk in your egg whites because the egg whites won't beat properly.
The pie baked up nicely and was well received. It has a sweet-tart taste due to the vinegar. I substituted regular milk left to sit for 20 minutes with a teaspoon of vinegar in it for buttermilk. I imagine if I had used buttermilk the sweet tart taste would have been more pronounced.   
I used a gluten free pie shell, (available at Whole Foods) and rice flour to make the pie gluten free.

Amber Pie

3 eggs, separated
1 cup plus six tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk (Some Safeways carry buttermilk. Whole Foods sells it also.)
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon flour (use rice flour if you want to be gluten free)
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup raisins
1 unbaked pie shell (Gluten free if necessary.)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix together the egg yolks, one cup of the sugar, the buttermilk, allspice, flour, vinegar, nuts and raisins. Pour into the pie shell.
3. Dot with the butter and bake about forty-five minutes or until golden brown and firm. Cool slightly.
4. Reduce the oven heat to 450 degrees
5. Beat the egg whites until frothy and gradually beat in the remaining sugar until mixture is stiff. Add the vanilla.
6. Spread meringue over pie and bake ten to fifteen minutes, or until meringue is lightly browned. Makes six servings.

Hancock Shaker Village India Relish

This condiment contains green tomatoes. Theoretically, green tomatoes are available all summer long if you can just go out to your garden and pick them. In practice, with most people buying their produce from a farm store or farmers market, October is green tomato season. It's getting colder in the mid Atlantic. When I go out to walk the puppy in the mornings, I wish for a hat and gloves.  Farmers are anticipating the first frost. Pick those suckers now, while people are still coming for fresh local produce. Don't wait for the frost.
Last Wednesday, Bob and I hustled out to the Bethesda Women's Farm Market early to buy our green tomatoes. At first I was afraid that I would have to drive to the Homestead Farm in Poolesville, which, this time of year, is like a convention center for preschoolers and their teachers. Yellow buses park in ranks, disgorging young kids to visit the pumpkin patch. But, luckily, I was spared the drive, as a man named Ray had baskets of lovely pale green tomatoes at his stall.
On Saturday afternoon, after noticing that the green on the tomatoes was starting to shade into a pale orange in a few spots, I decided I had better get busy and turn the tomatoes into relish before they all ripened. This happened twice last year. Baskets of green tomatoes became red tomatoes before I got around to canning them. So even though I had to go to the grocery store. I began chopping and measuring.
The only potentially hard to find ingredient in this recipe is citron. Citron, according to Wikipedia, is an actual citrus fruit. However, the pulp, the part of the other citrus fruits we eat or squeeze into juice, is not very good. What you get when you buy citron is the candied flesh of the inner rind. It is used for fruit cake, mincemeat and other vaguely esoteric foods. You can buy it on line at .www.nuts.com, among other places.
The relish is sweet and tart at the same time, due to the vinegar and sugar. In the 19th century, cooks served relishes to spark up their meals. Wikipedia says that relishes came from India. However, the website warns that the article on relishes "has multiple issues" so we can take that with a grain of salt (or sugar.).
You may be wondering what to do with India relish once you make it. First of all,  you have to remember you have it. Bob wants to move all the canned goods canned by me downstairs to the laundry room where they could be displayed on shelves at eye level.  Right now, they are all jammed together on a shelf in the upper reaches of the pantry. then, I would do what the 19th Century cooks did, and serve your relish with a meat dinner, roast chicken, roast beef, roast pork. Or, you can spread them on crackers and make an hors d'oeurve with brie or cheddar cheese and a dab of relish.
This recipe requires sealing in a boiling water bath. That means a great big canning kettle with a rack so you can lift up the jars. Hewitt does not give us any guidance about time. Sadly, neither do the various state cooperative extensions that have websites devoted to safe canning. I guess it is a bit much to expect home extension agents to determine canning times for every conceivable food people want to can. The website Seasoned Advice, at www.stackexchange.com, suggests that the cook use the processing time for the ingredient with the longest processing time. In this case, the processing time would be 40 minutes. Don't forget to sterilize your jars and lids.

Hancock Shaker Village India Relish

8 pounds very small green tomatoes (you may have to make do with regular-size tomatoes)
8 cups light brown sugar or maple sugar
2 cups water
3 sticks cinnamon
2 tablespoons ground ginger
3 lemons very thinly sliced
2 cups citron, shredded. (It comes diced now.)
3 cups raisins
Peel of one small orange, finely chopped

1. Wash to tomatoes and cut into quarters (or smaller pieces if using regular size tomatoes)
2. Bring the sugar and water to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves and simmer tow to three minutes. Add tomatoes and remaining ingredients. Simmer, stirring, three hours, or until lemon slices and citron peel look transparent and tomatoes are very tender. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal. Cool and store in a cool, dark, dry place. Serve with cold meat. Makes eight to ten pints.

Angel Food Cake

I must have, at some point in my life, made angel food cake. We have an angel food cake pan, after all. I am not a person given to buying kitchen equipment because I might need it sometime in the far distant future. Usually I buy stuff after I have muddled along for a while and then decide, yes, I really do need whatever it might be. So, obviously, I made angel food cake. The index and my scrawled dates next to the recipe tells me, yes, I made Prize Angel Food Cake from the Northeast on January 20, 1995. It was not a memorable occasion.
I made this angel food cake because my son and daughter-in-law were coming to dinner. I wanted something easy. If you have an electric mixer, and who does not in these days, angel food cake is easy. You beat, mix, pour and bake. No standing over a hot stove stirring some concoction that does not want to thicken.  You do need a big bowl. Twelve egg whites beaten takes up a lot of space.
I can see why they call it angel food cake. In the bowl, the batter is pure white, as a child might imagine the robes of angels. It is also very fluffy, of course, with all those egg whites.
Readers might be puzzled by the picture. The directions for angel food cake tell the cook to stick the neck of the cake pan into a bottle, and let the cake cool upside down. This is a picture of my angel food cake cooling over the neck of a bottle. 
There is very little about the angel food cake to be intimidated by. One thing I suggest, is breaking your egg whites into a small bowl and adding them one at a time to the large bowl you plan to beat them in. That way, if your eleventh egg white gets some yolk in it, you have not contaminated an entire dozen eggs.
The recipe says not to grease the pan. This is important. The batter, as it rises, clings to the side of the pan and therefore stays up.
Wikipedia says angel food cakes are usually not served frosted, but with some kind of a sauce poured over. Bob, when informed that there was no frosting, went rummaging in indignation through the jams and jellies collection and heated up ginger marmalade to pour over the cake. That worked, and so would any other jam that you prefer.

Angel Food Cake

1 1/3 cups sugar, sifted twice
1 cup sifted cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups egg whites, (about 12 whites)
1 1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Add one-third cup of the sifted sugar to the cake flour. Add the salt and sift the mixture together three times.
3. Beat the egg whites, preferably with a wire whisk (ahem, unless you are some sort of off the grid purist, use a hand mixer.), until they are foamy and add the cream of tartar. Continue beating until whites are stiff but not dry. Gradually beat in the remaining sugar, one tablespoon at a time. Fold in the vanilla and almond extract. Sift approximately one-quarter cup of the sugar and flour mixture over the batter. Fold in with a rubber spatula. Continue adding the sugar and flour mixture, folding in after each addition.
4. Pour the batter into an ungreased nine-inch tube pan. Bake about fouty-five minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched. Immediately turn the pan upside down, suspending tube part over the neck of a funnel or bottle. Let cake stand in the pan until cold, about one and one half hours. Makes enough cake to serve ten.

Red Snapper Grenobloise (Gluten Free)

Let's start off by saying Red Snapper is on the Monterey Bay Aquarium  Seafood Watch "avoid" list because it is over fished. I apologize to my readers and to the existing Red Snapper population, which has declined dramatically since the 1990s. If you want to use this website yourself to check whatever you plan to eat, it is at www.montereybayaquarium.org.. Also, you can google sustainable fishing. The Seafood Watch will come up right after the paid sites.
Red Snapper Grenobloise is an easy recipe, if you have the $25 a pound this stuff costs. Whole Red Snapper was not available at the Fishery, the market in Northwest DC where I usually buy fish. I got a huge slab of it instead, which negated the need to scale and clean the fish. I've done that a couple of times. It is not much fun.
Back in our prechild lives, during one of my sustained periods of unemployment, our friend Bruce showed up and invited me on a bicycle ride. We went down to Southwest, where the fish market boats were and still are parked. We bought a fish for a joint dinner with Bob and Bruce's wife, Sally. Bruce wanted to get the fish cleaned. I, always cheap, said, no, we can do it ourselves. Why pay?
I found out why that night, when Bruce ushered me into the kitchen and indicated that I could make dinner. He and Bob settled down for a nice chat and a glass of wine, while Sally, who was in law school, studied in the bedroom. I remember a lot of blood, some of it mine, and a big mess. So now, I have fish cleaned. I won't say always have fish cleaned, but I will say, have fish cleaned unless you are prepared to cope with a lot of blood, scales and fish guts.
My son and daughter in law came to dinner, the same dinner where I served fried oysters. They approved of the snapper, even though, confession(!) I couldn't find the capers, which I believe is what makes it grenobloise. I did not tell them that, however. My son, who is actually an extremely nice guy, can be rather censorious when it comes to leaving out ingredients. The capers showed up on the kitchen counter later on in the week. Who knows what could have happened to them?
The recipe calls for cooking the fish on the top of the stove in a skillet with an ovenproof handle. Well, a skillet with an ovenproof handle was somehow lacking in our repertoire of kitchen equipment. So, I transferred the fish to a glass baking pan for its 25 minutes in the oven. I also left out the lemon cubes because it sounded like way too much work for a little effect. However, it's your call.

Red Snapper Grenobloise

1 lemon
1 one-and -one half-pound red snapper
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons capers
lemon slices (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Peel the lemon, removing all the white pulp. Cut the lemon into thin slices and remove the seeds. Cut each slice into small cubes, discarding the membranes between sections. Reserve lemon cubes.
3. Thoroughly clean and scale the fish, but leave the head and tail intact. Rinse the fish under cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle the fish inside and outside with salt and pepper.
4. Melt the butter in a skillet with ovenproof handle large enough to hold the fish. When skillet is hot, put in the fish and cook only on one side for about five minutes. Tilt the pan occasionally and spoon the butter over the fish.
5. Place the fish in the oven and bake, basting occasionally, for about twenty-five minutes, or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork.
6. Remove the fish from the oven and transfer to a serving platter. Sprinkle with the capers, reserved lemon cubes and butter from the skillet. Garnish with lemon slices if desired.
Serves three.

Fried Oysters (Gluten Free)

When I sat down early in 2013 and looked over the list of recipes from the Northeast I had yet to make, it seemed like a doable list. There were some 80 recipes on the list. Unfortunately, I have been making very slow progress. Even though I cook and blog, I do not focus on the Northeast. It's a three part problem. A. I can't get the ingredients. (I may never make sauteed dandelion flowers.) B. There's the shellfish problem. My husband doesn't eat shellfish, and is rebelling against having a separate dinner cooked for him. C. The recipes are seasonal. I have two Christmas pudding recipes, which I guess I can get cranked out by the first of the year, but I'm not making them in October.
Well, Wednesday night, my son and daughter-in-law came over. I was able to cross one lowly item off the list, Fried Oysters. I love oysters. I confess that I first tasted them as a teenager in the Harvard Club in New York City and have been hooked on them ever since. I even risked getting beaten up for them. Here's the story.
One foggy winter day back in the 70s, Bob and I were cruising around the less fashionable parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Down somewhere south of St. Michael's, we came upon a roadside diner with a hand lettered sign. "Oysters," it said.
"Yahoo," I said, and proceed to make a u-turn and park. We blithely walked in the door and stopped short. Even I, the oblivious one, could see that this was a mistake. The place had been taken over by what looked like a gang of Hell's Angels. They were drinking at 11:30 am, shouting at the one rundown looking waitress, and shooting pool. They hit the cue ball so hard the balls jumped off the table. What to do?
The obvious choice was to run like crazy. But, this did not seem like such a great idea. I did not want to be picked up by the scruff of the neck by some drunken, enraged biker inquiring why I did not care for his company. So we sidled into a booth, slid down in the seats so as to make ourselves invisible, and ordered our oysters in a whisper. When they came, we bolted them down and got the hell out of there.
These fried oysters are supposed to be deep fried. Well, when I was copying down the ingredients, I failed to check for oil. We were, in fact, nearly out of oil. It was like the legend of Hanukkah, except that the oysters did not fry for nine nights. Instead of being deep fried, these were sauteed, I guess. But they were good. Plump, moist, yum, yum yum. My son and I ate an entire 16 ounce jar of fried oysters between us. His wife tried one, praised it and left most of it on her plate. This woman is a trooper.

Fried Oysters

2 twelve ounce containers oysters with liquor or about 36 shucked, fresh oysters with liquor
1 1/2 cups dry bread crumbs. (I used gluten free breadcrumbs, available at Giant Food)
1 1/2 cups flour. (I used Bob's Red Mill Rice Flour, available at Safeway and other locations.)
1/4 cup milk
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
fat or oil for deep frying.
lemon wedges or tartar sauce

1. Drain the oysters
2 Combine the bread crumbs and flour.
3. Combine the milk, eggs, salt and pepper.
4. Roll the oysters in crumb mixture, then in egg mixture and again in the crumb mixture.
5. Fry a few at a time, two to three minutes or until they are golden, in a fry basket, in fat or oil heated to 350 degrees. Drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon wedges or tartar sauce. Makes six servings. 

Quince Marmalade

Quince Marmalade is the last of the unusual and may I say daunting, marmalade recipes in the Northeast section of the New York Times Heritage Cookbook. Whoever heard of cucumber marmalade, or carrot marmalade or tomato marmalade? Not me. Marmalade came from Dundee, in Scotland,  in those white ceramic jars which one then appropriated to put one's pencils in.
Quinces present their own special problem, namely, what are they, and where do you get them? I thought quinces were bright orange, had a smooth skin like a tomato, and sort of a star shaped stem end. I thought I had seen them at Magruder's grocery story in Chevy Chase a couple of years ago. I had  inquired of a fruit and vegetable man at Whole Foods as to when they were available. He told me quinces come in the fall.
When it got to be fall, mid September, I started scratching around grocery stores and the Internet looking for the things.
They were tougher to run down than I would have thought. Harris Teeter might have them in a few weeks. Whole Foods didn't  have them at all. I was shown some uninspiring specimens at the Davenport Safeway and rejected them. I finally found what appeared to be good quality quinces at the Safeway in Potomac. Yay Safeway. They weren't what I had expected at all. They were a pale green with a shape like a lemon on steroids. The fruit and vegetable man told  me they turned yellow when they ripened.
I stuck them in the ornamental fruit bowl on the table and waited to see if they would ripen. Wikipedia tells us that they do not ripen on the tree unless they are frosted and subsequently decay (Huh?). Wikipedia also refers to their strong perfume. I don't have the sharpest nose on the block, but these quinces were not particularly fragrant. Wikipedia also says that quinces, which should properly be referred to in the plural as quince, are not usually eaten raw. I'm  not surprised.
On the first of October, just before we were due to leave for Massachusetts, I decided I had better deal with the quince. I did not want to return to a bowlful of rotten quince.
This recipe, as always, presents certain problems. First of all, it says, four to six medium size quince. Okay. I suspect my quince are bigger than the ones the cook had in mind. I used six. "Put them in a pan" the recipe says.  I guess the author of the recipe had her quince jelly pan in mind. I used the big saucepan. Even then, the quinces wouldn't all fit. One sat on top of the other four. The recipe instructed me to cover it three-quarters of the way with water. Well, in order to have any water at all touching the quince perched on top of the others, I had to use more water than the recipe inferred that I should use.As a result, I had to boil it longer to get the fruit to "jam." But that is getting ahead of myself.
First I had to scald the quince in order to peel them. Peeling my quince was unlike peeling any other fruit, such as peaches, where if one scalds them, the peels slide right off. After doubling the boiling time to account for the quince on top of the other four underwater, I ended  up peeling them with a potato peeler.
Boiling took longer than anticipated. After all, it always does when I make marmalade. I believe in this case the cause was I used more water than the author of the recipe used. Since I don't know how much she used, it is impossible to use the same amount. But I do think I used more because I covered my quince in order to partially submerge the one sitting on top of the others.
How does it taste? Sweet, but without a definite fruit flavor. Even though it contains orange juice and orange peel, it does not taste of oranges. If you want to try this, now's the time, while quince are somewhat available. You do not need a boiling water bath. To can it, one need only boil the clean jars to sterilize them,  put the hot jam in the jars and cover the jam with melted paraffin.

Quince Marmalade

4 to six medium-sized quinces (Sorry, can't help you there. I would say, get what you can.)
grated rind and juice of one orange
2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 teaspoon finely chopped yellow part of lemon peel
sugar (a lot. Buy a five pound bag) 

1. Wash the quince. Place in a pan and add water to three-quarters cover. Bring to a boil and simmer ten minutes.
2. Remove the quince from the cooking liquid. Peel and core the quince, returning the skin and cores to the cooking liquid. Chop the quince and reserve.
3. Cook the skin and cores slowly thirty minutes. Strain and reserve liquid.
4. Place the chopped quince, grated rind and juice of the orange, apples and lemon peel in a heavy pan. Add reserved liquid until pulp is covered by one-half-inch liquid. Bring to boil and simmer gently until fruit is very tender. Mash the fruit. (I used a potato masher.)
5. Measure the pulp into a pan and add three-quarters cup sugar for each cup of pulp. Heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Boil rapidly until a set is reached, about ten minutes. (It took me over an hour.) )To test for set, put a drop of mixture on a saucer, refrigerate and push your finger into the cooled drop of marmalade. Your finger should leave a clean path when the marmalade is done.)
6. Pour the marmalade into hot sterilized jelly glasses, pour a thin layer of paraffin over and cool. Cover and store in a cool, dark, dry lace. Makes  about 6 six ounce jelly jars.