Thursday, January 25, 2018

Marmalade

As is their wont these days, Enid and Erika Skyped this morning. Erika just achieved a month yesterday, so Enid is on what passes for “maternity leave” in the USA: 12 unpaid weeks, find your own subs, do all the preparation, marking, and report cards. (Well, OK; her case may be a bit unusual in that she’s the French department of a large high school in Richland, in eastern Washington State, an area with very few qualified French-speaking teachers. But still...)
Anyway, yesterday Isaac arrived home after work with two new colleagues. They were staying for supper. And he hadn’t told her.
In some families, my own included, that would have been an unpardonable breach. Except that Isaac then brought up a bottle of wine from the cellars and made supper. 
And they had a wonderful time.

This scenario would never have occurred to me; I do hardly any cooking at all. I know how, in a survival sort of way, but when I married Sandy, an enthusiastic, inventive cook, I pretty-much stopped. She was obviously much better than I, much more interested (I cannot remember most meals I had by the next day, whereas she has a photographic memory for the details of meals she had years ago) and was reluctant to make a habit of eating the sort of meals I grew up with and knew how to prepare. The kids were encouraged to follow her example rather than mine, and have, subsequently, become quite accomplished themselves. They also had the wit or good fortune to marry partners who are equally accomplished.

Which almost brings us to the marmalade of the title.

As it turns out, there are some things no one else in my family does in the cooking department, and, if I may briefly rub my own ego a bit, that’s where I shine in my own modest and humble way. (!)

We grow a number of fruit-producing trees and vines, which produce quantities of fruit in season, much of which I turn into jellies and very occasionally jams. I also like a good dark, dense Christmas cake, an enthusiasm not shared by my spouse, offspring or, indeed, their offspring. So I make it for me and friends who share my enthusiasm, or are, at least, very polite. Then there’s a good pea-soup: split green peas, leeks, carrots, potatoes, onions, a good shot of garlic, and ham. With Maggi seasoning. This gets a better reception, but I rarely detect in others the kind of enthusiasm I feel for it.

And finally, most importantly, there’s marmalade. It has to be made in late January, early February, when the seville oranges become available. In Campbell River I’ve found only one reliable source, and I don’t suppose they’re easier to find elsewhere. This must be because seville oranges taste awful until processed; I expect there’s no market for them at all, except for those few of us who still make our own marmalade. 
I grew up in Victoria, BC, a place where edible British things were very much in vogue, so good imported commercial marmalade was not hard to find. (Unlike in Richland, Kennewick, or Pasco, Washington, as I discovered during our visit to welcome the arrival of Erika!) But if you like the taste of bitter orange marmalade, there’s nothing that comes close to the taste of the one you make yourself, not Frank Cooper, not Crosse and Blackwell, not even James Keiller’s excellent Dundee Marmalade.

I’ve just finished this year’s batch and, finding myself temporarily in a didactic mood as I’m waiting for the last batch to cool, prior to putting it into jars, I’m going to tell you how it was done:


First thing: we used to own a jelly bag or three, but then we bought a “Finnish steamer/juicer” which, like so many things Finnish, although pricey, is just wonderful.  (http://www.leevalley.com/en/garden/page.aspx?p=67388&cat=2,40733,44734,67388) 
But obviously a jelly bag will do just fine.
This year I had 20 seville oranges, 10 blood oranges (not necessary: I bought them by mistake, to eat. Didn’t like them.) and 1 dozen lemons. 
Quartered the fruit. Separated the peel from the flesh. Put the flesh into the juicer, piled the peel on top, and steamed that until the peel was quite tender. Removed the orange peel (I find the lemon peel doesn’t add to my experience, so don’t use it. Don’t know about the taste of blood orange peel, so didn’t use that either.)
Steamed the flesh until all the available juice was extracted. 
Cut the white from the outer peel, and discarded that. Then took the outer peel and cut it into small strips.
Re-united the juice and the peel. I had about 17 cups of peel-juice mixture, so I topped that up to make 20 cups.
Decided on 3 batches of 6 2/3 cups each. Added 1/2 tsp of baking soda to each batch of the juice-peel mixture.
Brought this up to a rolling boil, then added 2 pkgs of pectin per batch.
Added 6 cups of white sugar.
Heated the mixture to 222F, then removed the heat to let it cool. Stirred the mixture several times before about 210F, to get rid of what appears to be foam, but turns out to be readily absorbed.
Cooled it to just around 160F. (This is so the peel won’t all float to the top.)  Then I poured the marmalade into jars and sealed them. 

Simple, right?

And yes, there was a bit left over, so I got to try it: excellent, as usual!

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