Tag Archives: Marmalade

Unbearably smug

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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The last of the Sevilles and I barely registered their presence. Here and gone and not really that baggy or grim-looking. Not ugly enough. Normally I’m halted by the sheer filth. But these were tight little things; tidy orange globes with a few grimy seams. All a bit middle class. Still, I couldn’t resist. Because when all else fails, you’ve got a kitchen smelling like an orange grove for twenty-four hours. And then potted up, you’ve got jars of warm pellucid brightness: Seville orange marmalade. And then you can spend the rest of the year being unbearably smug, perhaps handing jars out to people (‘it’s probably awful, yes, I made it, not sure what it tastes like, I didn’t bother measuring, oh god I never buy pectin, it’s all in the pips and pith!’). We are a violently humble people.

And we don’t do it like the French, who on the whole have far more sex than we do. My French friend Monique literally throws beetroot at me in the street. There is no preamble at all. And because it’s straight from her allotment, there is a fair amount of clag attached. She unearths atrocious-looking, gorgeous-tasting stuff and shares it with a bewildered, Gallic shrug, as if to say: what am I going to do with all this incessant greenery?

There are no strings attached to her generosity. And because English is not her first language, there is no hidden meaning in her conversation. There are no barbs or subtle slights. No crowing. We are great crowers. And because I have been here a fair while this time round, I have noticed this as one notices the way ivy creeps into brickwork and destabilizes it. You are demolished slowly, gently, by stealth.

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The clue is no questions. No interest in who you are or what you’re doing, as if your being interesting is somehow a threat. It must be something to do with being islanders, being victors and colonizers. We are guilty and proud and a bit defensive at the same time. All of this is in the marmalade, by the way: that bitter candy and burnt orange aroma, taut, thick rind against umber jelly, the sticky tributaries of syrup, the brightness in winter, the selfless preserving, the putting up, and putting up with, the sex (or lack thereof). We put it all in there. Possibly why Seville orange marmalade is such a complex preserve; because we are.

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Seville Orange Marmalade

Adapted from Delia Smith, Complete Cookery Course

There are versions of this elsewhere on the blog – I would say this is the definitive Delia, and my favourite so far. It’s lovely on its own on a piece of toast, an oatcake, anything, or dropped into some cake batter (gingerbread is a natural bedfellow as is anything chocolate). And in case you are put off by the intricacies of making your own marmalade, just so you know there are no intricacies: I have been making very good marmalade for years with nothing but a big saucepan and a clean handkerchief (for the pips and pith). It’s a bit long-winded, that’s all. Always worth it.

2lb (900g) Seville oranges
1 lemon
4 pints (2.25 litres) water
4lb (1.8kg) granulated sugar (you could make some of this light muscovado)

Six 1lb (450g) jars, a square of gauze/muslin or a clean handkerchief or a new pair of tan tights/stockings, string and a saucer.

Begin by squeezing the juice from the oranges and the lemon into the pan you’ll be using. Remove all the pith and pips as you go and place them on a square of muslin laid over a bowl; the pips and pith contain the pectin which will enable your marmalade to set. Now cut the peel into shreds and add it to the juice – as fine or as thick as you like, but the thicker it is, the longer it will take to soften. When you’re done, add the water to the juice and peel, tie up the muslin to form a small bag – make sure nothing will escape – and add that too. Leave in a cool place overnight.

The next day, tie the muslin bag to the handle so that it bobs like a cork in the liquid  (but doesn’t touch the bottom). Now is the time to put a saucer in the freezer so you can begin testing later. Bring the liquid gently to the boil and then lower the heat and simmer. It is ready when the peel is completely soft – you can test a piece by pressing it between your finger and thumb. This can take anything from 35 minutes to an hour and a half; be aware that once sugar meets rind, it will no longer soften.

When the peel is ready, lift out the muslin bag and leave it on a plate until it’s cool enough to handle. Pour the sugar into the pan and stir over a very low heat until it has dissolved. You may want to hold back on the full amount of sugar and go for a slightly tarter taste. When there are no crystals left, increase the heat and bring the marmalade to a rolling boil. Now squeeze every last bit of the jelly-like pectin that oozes from the muslin bag into the pan. Every little helps here, so be vigilant. Skim off any froth or scum that comes to the surface and leave the marmalade at a fast boil for 15 minutes. Now put a tablespoon of it on one of the cold saucers and let it cool in the fridge. If when you push the marmalade with your finger the mixture crinkles like a furrowed brow, then you have a ‘set’.

Keep testing at 10 minute intervals until it has reached setting consistency. The mixture will start to look more amber and treacly – there is a trick here which is to watch as droplets of the marmalade leave a spoon. When it’s ready, there will be one single droplet; one of the myriad ways of knowing it’s set. Leave the marmalade to settle for about 20 minutes otherwise all the peel will float to the top of the jar. Wash and dry your jars and warm them in a moderate oven – this will sterilize them. Ladle the marmalade into the jars and seal immediately. Label when completely cold.

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Walnut bread

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

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God, I miss bread. I don’t eat it much anymore. Maybe it’s because so much of it is that pre-sliced, flaccid, crustless variety sweating into its plastic bag. But the real thing is always worth it no matter how much you long for sleep afterwards, your legs leaden and your eyes drooping like a bloodhound. We don’t eat as much bread as we once did, perhaps because we’re not going down the pit anymore, or walking up mountains on a regular basis. So we forget what sustenance it provides. And good bread is real food, a meal in itself.

I have a memory of bread, toasted. It was homemade. It came in a mound, brown and slightly dusty. It filled the room with the most extraordinary fragrance. The bread belonged to our new neighbours in Exeter. They were a family of five: two boys and a girl. She was my age. The fact they lived next door meant there was some sort of unspoken rule that their daughter should accompany me to school. I was about seven and I was new to the area, my parents freshly divorced. So I would hover in the doorway to the kitchen while they finished up their breakfast. And what a breakfast! I was still digesting my porridge, but I could have sat down and started all over again in this new place.

The smell of hot, cakey bread, the dark husks still evident on their plates, and jellied spoonfuls of the bitterest marmalade sliding over the top of creamy, salted butter – the combination almost brought me to my knees. It still does.

Freya – for that was her name –  was given the task of ‘walking me’ (like a dog) along the back lanes to school. She lasted all of a day doing this. But still she went through the charade of leaving the house with me, walking to the end of the street and then when the coast was clear leaving me there. Every day at the allotted time though, I hovered and inhaled. I think there were seeds in the bread; it smelled nutty. A kind of charcoal splendour drifted daily from the toaster. I felt weak with longing.

They had a cat called Orlando who was an orange ball of hatred and bile. Like the rest of the family he carried about him an unmistakable aura of status. Our cat, Smudge, never stood a chance. They fought daily, one paw resting on the fence for balance, the other taking slightly camp swipes at the other’s face. It was obvious who would win.

Freya when the time came went on to her posh, all-girls school and I went to the local comprehensive. I never saw her again. Not properly. We did occasionally bump into the family. Freya’s mum did contemporary dance as a hobby (her dance group were on the local news!). Freya’s dad – an orthodontist – fitted me and my brother with braces. What a start though every day to eat homemade bread, toasted and smothered in some gorgeous preserve. The five of them sat there like warriors. How could you ever be miserable when you had a family like that?

Walnut Bread

Adapted from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes

1 tbs dried yeast

1 tbs dark soft brown sugar

450 ml (15 fl oz) lukewarm water

600g (1 lb 6 oz) wholemeal/whole wheat stone-ground flour

2 teaspoons of salt

20 g (¾ oz) butter, melted

40 g (1½ oz) walnut pieces

2 tsp sesame seeds or sunflower seeds

1 egg, beaten

To make a ferment or ‘sponge’, whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar in 150 ml (5 fl oz) of the lukewarm water. The temperature is important; too hot and it will kill the yeast, but too cold and the yeast won’t activate. It needs to be ‘finger hot.’ The best way to achieve this is to measure two-thirds cold tap water, pour into a jug and top up with one-third boiling water.

Leave the yeast to bubble in a warm place until the surface has about 2 cm (¾ in) of froth on it. It will take about 15 minutes. It should begin bubbling after about 5 minutes – if it doesn’t, the chances are the yeast won’t work. Put the flour, remaining sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour on the yeast ferment, the remaining water and the melted butter, and mix together until you have a soft, sloppy dough. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding the walnuts right at the end. You can toast the walnuts lightly in a dry pan beforehand if you would like to accentuate their richness in the bread, and also throw in a few more if you like abundance.

Cut the dough in half and form 2 fat sausage shapes. Put them into 2 buttered 450 g (1 lb) loaf tins. Cover each with cling film/plastic wrap or put in a large plastic bag and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until the dough has risen to the top.

Preheat the oven to 230C/450F. Wash the tops of the loaves gently with egg (the dough can easily deflate) and sprinkle with the seeds. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove the loaves from their tins and return them to the oven for a further 5 minutes to crisp up. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Wrap in cling film/plastic wrap and freeze if you are not going to eat them right away.

Walnuts and flour

Walnuts admittedly belong to the quieter, fall months. I hope you will forgive this seasonal lapse – I wrote this during a white-hot, muggy spell in LA when it felt as if the earth would crack and we would be showered with all our possessions. The smell of autumn – hot bread, wet grass and cool cheeks – seemed preferable.

Now to flour – I know it seems obvious, but you can’t make good bread with the substandard stuff. Fresh, stone-ground whole wheat flour will transform a loaf from okay to unforgettable. Because stones grind the flour more finely than metal cylinders, there are more bran particles in the bread, which gives it a more pronounced flavour and texture (that lovely crunch). The germ is also more present, enhancing the flour’s nutritional value. The bread doesn’t last as long, though, because of the high oil content, so you have to eat it quickly (shame).

A word about bitterness

06 Friday Apr 2012

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Up until relatively recently all oranges were bitter. They originated – as did all varieties, right down to the tangerine and the kumquat – from China, and go back 3,000 years. Arab traders brought them to Europe at the end of the Roman Empire, along with spices, silk and sugar, and the main crop was established around the area of Seville, in Andalusia, hence the name we English know them by. The skin of the bitter orange (Citrus aurantium) is distinct from its sweet cousin (C. sinensis) in that it is baggy and heavily dimpled, reminiscent of cellulite. Here in southern California, bitter oranges are often left to rot on the branch, untouched and overlooked, but up until the nineteenth century it was the bitterness that people prized the most. The aromatic peel and sharp juice were symbols of opulence and sensuality, and the flowers were distilled and used to flavour food as well as to perfume baths and make-up.

They make the best marmalade, without a doubt. In fact they made the first marmalade, if you ignore the Portuguese quince version and the pear, plum and gooseberry pastes of Tudor England. And of course it was all fluke: a ship containing a cargo of Seville oranges took shelter from a storm in Dundee. Local greengrocer James Keiller bought the lot, and his wife, Janet, turned them into marmalade. By 1797, they had the first marmalade factory.

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I have to include a recipe for marmalade. I came by some Chinottos here (a variety of bitter orange) and needed to put them to good use, but there are many other things you can do with them. Bitter oranges and their peel freeze well, so if you’re ever in doubt, always say yes. Their juice is a good replacement for lemon or lime, particularly to accompany rich meat, such as duck. The peel can be used for a bouquet garni which deepens and adds character to stews – pare strips of zest using a potato peeler from the fruit and hang up to dry in a warm, sunny place before adding it to a herb bundle.

The marmalade recipe below uses demerara, similar to turbinado, cassonade or Hawaiian washed sugar, which is darker and coarser than cane sugar and adds a treacly dimension. It is in no way intended to be a definitive version. Marmalade, I’ve realized, is a very personal thing and everyone has their peccadilloes – thick cut or thin, syrupy, solid, wobbly, astringent, ladled over ice cream, eaten only at night etc. In other words, marmalade is a minefield. So with that in mind, I tentatively ask you to please consider this version and we’ll hopefully leave it at that.

Bitter orange marmalade

Adapted from Pam Corbin, River Cottage Handbook No.2: Preserves

1kg (2.25lb) bitter oranges

75 ml (5 tbs) lemon juice

2kg (4.5lb) Demerara sugar

2.5 litres (4½ pints) of water

Makes 5-6 450g (1lb) jars

I followed the instructions for the bergamot and orange marmalade recipe here, with one difference: the lemon juice is added to the pan with the sugar, not before. The emphasis on weight rather than individual oranges helps keep the ratios balanced, but always taste as you go. I often add three-quarters of the warmed sugar to the juice and taste, then add some more, taking it bit by bit; only you know your sweetness threshold.

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Marmalade Tart

This dough is idiot-proof and takes well to being speckled with rosemary. Think of the tart as a ‘shelf’ for the marmalade and you have yourself a fine breakfast. It also makes a suave dessert, delicately poised over a lake of cream with the breath of the oven still upon it. I have a preference for thin, ‘single’ cream, which laps at the edges of the crust and swirls, ripple-like, through the sticky juice. A crisp cloud of vanilla ice cream is also not to be sniffed at.

Adapted from a David Lebovitz recipe for Easy Jam Tart

Serves 8-12

9 tbs (110g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup (100g) sugar

1 large egg & 1 large egg yolk

Small splash of almond extract

1½ cup (190g) flour

½ cup (70g) ground almonds

½ tsp sea salt

1 scant tsp baking powder

1¾ cups (450g) marmalade or jam (apricot would be lovely)

Zest of a lemon or orange

1 tsp finely chopped rosemary

Demerara sugar

Beat together the butter and sugar until well incorporated. Then mix in the egg, egg yolk, zest and almond extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, ground almonds, salt, finely chopped rosemary and baking powder. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet until the mixture just comes together. Take about ¾ of the dough and pat it into a disc shape, wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge. Take the remaining dough and roll it into a log shape about 2ins (5cm) in diameter, wrap it in plastic and chill both pieces for about half an hour.

Remove the disc-shaped dough from the fridge and, using the heel of your hand, press it into the bottom and sides of an unbuttered tart pan (9-10ins/24cm). Pat until it looks evenly distributed. Now spread the marmalade over the top so that it forms a smooth plateau. Remove the log of dough from the fridge and slice into cookie-sized rounds, then lay these over the marmalade, in whatever pattern you want; try to cover as much of the preserve as possible as you go. Top with Demerara sugar (about 2 tbs) and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Let it cool slightly before serving.

Lime Marmalade

15 Thursday Mar 2012

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Preservers insist that it’s better, when making jams and marmalades, to go by weight rather than amount. Limes come in many different sizes, and with my crop some are no bigger than a pellet, so getting the scale out here makes sense. In scientific terms, sugar concentration of about 60-80% in a fruit product ensures its preservation; having to get out a calculator in order to cook something properly makes my palms sweat, so for now I’m simply following a recipe by National Trust treasure Sara Paston-Williams. Tasting what you’re preserving will also give you an idea of the percentage of sugar you will need, bearing in mind that a certain amount of bitterness is a good thing.

The steps I take are the same as for the bergamot and orange marmalade recipe, except I use 1½ lb of limes to 1.5 kg (3 lb 5oz) organic cane sugar. It doesn’t soak overnight as I don’t want the taste to intensify and I add 3½ pints (6 heaped cupfuls) of water to the juice, though you may feel it needs more diluting.

It’s clear from the start that when it comes to limes, I’m dealing with a very different beast. The skin is difficult to shred, being much tougher than lemon rind and the membrane refuses to part from the skin, so that in the end I’m chucking the flesh into the pot as well. The taste, before adding the sugar, is nothing short of harrowing. However, all potted up it looks very respectable, and the dark green shred gives it a touch of the tropics. It tastes and looks absolutely nothing like Rose’s soft and zesty jelly. This is dark, sultry stuff and I’d suggest moderating the lime with ½ lb of lemons to make it less punishing. Thinned to a sharp sauce, it would be perfect dripped over banana dumplings (bananas in any form work well), a steamed ginger pudding, or as a glaze for pork chops, shrimp or salmon. At the risk of sounding very 70s, men love this preserve; if I was into marketing, I’d call it Marmalade for Men.



Lemon Marmalade

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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I’m rather old guard in my tastes when it comes to marmalade. I find the alchemy of rind, sugar and, say, lemon juice bubbling itself to a thick amber syrup, and the smell of bitter citrus caramel more than enough to satisfy my needs. It took me about five years just to get over the fact that I’d made a jar of marmalade that was edible. But there is always more to discover – more complexity, more ways, whole fruit, less sugar, honey. I recently had a cooling spoonful of Blenheim apricot jam, and hidden in the lushness were apricot kernels that, when bitten, released their almond essence like a mini gun-shot.

But it’s taken me a while to get to herbs. This idea was introduced to me via the genius of Jessica Koslow. Her company Sqirl (based here in LA) is doing profound and wonderful things with marmalades and jams. I can only ape her originality and skill. Chamomile (meaning ‘ground apple’) adds a fruity, soft, almost soothing backnote here and in no way detracts from the citrus strength of the preserve. Harvest whole flower heads and keep them intact; crushing them releases the oils and there goes the flavour. If in doubt leave them out, or try something else in their place. Lemon balm would be interesting, either fresh or dried.

Chamomile

The Bergamot and Orange Marmalade recipe acts as my control – if I went into that much detail each time, we would probably both be reaching for the Mogadon, so I will simply give you the ingredient list here. You may also want to make the marmalade in one day rather than two, in which case omit the overnight soaking. Fills about 6 8oz/half pint jam jars.

Lemon Marmalade with Chamomile

12 lemons

1.35 kg (3lbs) organic cane sugar

20g (1 1/2 tbs) dried Chamomile (added to the muslin along with the pips and pith)

3 pints (6 cups) water (with 1 pint/2 cups added later if necessary)

A bit of history

Lemon marmalade appeared soon after the 13th century with the arrival into England of oranges and lemons. The oranges were bitter Sevilles from Spain and Portugal, or belonging to the Venetian spice ships. Jars of Citrenade were also imported; this was a kind of lemon marmalade, but solid and eaten in pieces, rather like the Portuguese ‘marmelo’ that began life in the Middle Ages. Marmelo was a stiff paste of quinces – citrus came later – made with honey and spices, cut into blocks and served as sweetmeats or fruit Pastilles (nothing like Rowntrees).


How not to die from marmalade

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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To clarify, you can’t die of botulism from a dodgy jar of marmalade; leave that to the pickled cucumbers (although apparently they won’t kill you either, see the marvellous Sandor Katz). Pretty much the worst thing that can happen is mould. To avoid this, you want clean, hot jars, hot marmalade and sufficiently high levels of sugar and acid to inhibit the growth of bacteria. 212F is enough to kill off all the nasty buggers. An instant-read thermometer is a wise investment here; It doesn’t have to be hugely expensive and it’s a very handy piece of kit, good also for making fresh cheese, checking roasted meats and deep frying.

Although it’s tempting when you see the mountain of sugar sitting in the saucepan surrounded by a moat of juice, don’t skimp on the amount called for. The sweetness will mellow over time. I put my jars and lids (if the seal comes separately always use a new one, as it does degrade) in the dishwasher and then in a medium hot oven for ten minutes just before filling, and then again after sealing. If you’re unsure about whether to hand this out to friends, or if the lid ‘pops’ as the marmalade cools, just keep the jars in the fridge and eat within a year. Otherwise, store in a cool, dark place.