What with Russia annexing Ukrania piecemeal, so-called
Muslims abducting schoolgirls, the UN reporting that torture is as prevalent as
ever, and the British electorate (the white bit anyway) openly declaring its
ugly xenophobia, now seems a good time to tell you my easy recipe for Seville
orange marmalade. Actually I should have told you earlier as, here at least,
the Seville orange season is coming to an end.
First steal some Seville oranges. (Easy in Greece as most
Greeks consider them useless and inedible, and let them rot and fall off the
trees.) Weigh them, entire as they are, and make a note of the total weight.
Cut them up into little pieces — thin slivers or fat chunks, according to how
you like your marmalade — and tip them — peel, flesh, pith, juice, pips and all
— into a plenty big enough pan. Add just a little water — just enough to stop
it burning — burning is the bugbear in marmalade making — and put it on the gas
or electric ring. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon,
then reduce the heat and keep cooking (and stirring!) until the pieces of skin
are at least partially softened, or al dente, or however you like it. (Scoop a
bit out and try it if you can stand the bitterness).
Take the pan off the heat and add the same weight of sugar
as the original weight of the oranges. (You made a note, remember?) Ordinary
white granulated sugar, don’t be fooled into buying ‘special preserving sugar’
or whatnot. Now go away and do something else for a while; until tomorrow if
you like.
When you come back, it is important to have all the utensils
you need ready to hand, as if you turn your back on cooking marmalade for a
second it will stick to the bottom of the pan, burn, and be ruined with a vile
acrid taste. So ignore visitors, ringing telephones etc. You will need: a
wooden chopping board, such as the one you used for cutting up the oranges.
Your wooden spoon. Enough jars, with tightly fitting lids. A dinner plate. A
ladle, preferably one with a little spouty bit. A thick cloth. A teaspoon. Take
the lids off the jars and put them in a row so as to get the right lid on the
right jar later. Put the jars in a corresponding row on the wooden
chopping-board. (This latter is to lessen the possibly glass-cracking thermal
shock when you ladle in the hot marmalade.) .
Now relight the gas and bring the mix to the boil, stirring continuously with your wooden
spoon. When it’s boiling turn the heat down, and use the teaspoon to take a
drop or two out of the pan and put it on the plate. Leave this drop a minute or
two to cool, (Don’t stop stirring the pan), then tilt the plate. If the drop
runs down, you need to boil the mix some more. Keep doing this test until the
drop stays where it is or only slides down very slowly. The marmalade is now
ready, but keep stirring, and at the same time (some dexterity needed) use the
ladle to scoop out just a little marmalade and try to get it into one of the
jars. Then a little scoop into the next jar and so on. Fill the jars slowly,
going along the row one by one and then back again, and not completely filling one jar and then the next, (thermal shock,
remember.) when a jar is fullish, grasp it firmly with the cloth (it will be
very hot) and screw the lid on quickly, so as to create a partial vacuum as it
cools, so the marmalade will keep until opening and not go mouldy. As the pan
approaches emptiness turn the heat off.
When all the jars are full and their lids on, put pan and
ladle and wooden spoon and plate and teaspoon in the sink to soak. Leave the
full jars on the wooden board for a couple of hours to cool; then you can wash
their outsides as you will inevitably have dribbled some marmalade down the
sides.
Note that this marmalade contains all the orange including the pips. They are quite edible and part
of the ‘real marmalade experience’. It is a myth, perpetuated by old-fashioned
prep-school matrons, that eating orange pips causes appendicitis.
It is an unsolved mystery of marmalade making that one kilo
of oranges plus one kilo of sugar does not,
in spite of there being very little evaporation, equate to two kilos of
marmalade, in fact it comes out to little more than one kilo.
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