Nettle and Quince

Two years ago I made marmalade for the first time. I discovered then the fastidious pleasure of the process — recorded here. Last winter, feeling compelled, I made marmalade again. Already I have found a shortcut.

It happened inadvertently; I started the New Year making marmalade by accident. Surely there is a symbolic truth to be culled from the incident. I had planned to make this — adequately rebaptised — ‘marmalade’ cake, so, as per the recipe, I began by boiling the oranges for hours.

But the day passed and so the moment, and the year started with boiled oranges but no cake. I do admit I let those oranges sit in the fridge for a few days, until it became high time to use them. And the easiest thing I thought to do was to make marmalade.

But there was no time to dedicatedly slice each sliver of rind — I’ve given up midnight baking and marmalade making for the minute — so feeling inspired by the process of the cake, I simply blitzed the whole oranges in the mixer. Then recooked the orange purée with an approximate amount of sugar (the ideal proportion is one to one, if one had thought to weigh the oranges beforehand). Ta-da! Orange marmalade in a minute. Because even though there are two long-ish periods of cooking, the hands-on part is very fast.

To wit — I made marmalade again a week later, in the time it took the rest of the family to prepare dinner.

***

Super fast blood orange marmalade
A glug of campari at the last minute of cooking gives the marmalade a boozy bitter kick

Organic blood oranges (or regular oranges, or, if using Seville oranges, boil for a good while longer — 2 to 3 hours — but when using precious Seville oranges I prefer to honour them with the full labour of love marmalade treatment)
Equal weight amount of light caster sugar
Campari (optional)

Special equipment: food processor

Weigh the oranges. Scrub them under cold water. Place the oranges in a saucepan and fill with water so as to submerge the oranges. (The oranges will float in the water, but not too much as long as they are propped up against each other.)

Cook the oranges for about an hour.

Reserve the liquid and let the oranges cool just enough to handle, then cut them into quarters, remove any ostensible pips, and throw into the food processor.

Mix for a minute or two, depending on the desired consistency. ***My family is divided on this one. Some prefer the little specs of rind as shown in the pictures above, while others like a smoother consistency. The difference is a few additional twirls of the blade.***

Scrape the orange purée into a saucepan, add an equal weight of sugar, and cook on a gentle boil until the marmalade starts to gel. Depending on the quantity, it could take 20 to 45 minutes. ***The way to test the gelling is to place one teaspoon of jam in the refrigerator until it cools, and check the consistency.

Meanwhile, boil some jars and lids for 5 minutes in a large saucepan with a few inches of water.

Immediately ladle the hot marmalade into the jars and seal tightly.

Now think of breakfast this weekend…

This entry was posted on 26 January 2018 at 16:26 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.