Cardamon and Clementine Marmalade

Today my kitchen smells of clementines. Their sweet aroma, mixed with some upper notes of green cardamon is so good that if I could figure out a way of bottling it I'd wear it behind my ears for special occasions!

I've played around with the flavours to produce a light fragrant, not-too-sweet marmalade. Cardamon is one of my favourite flavours, and these green cardamons marry beautifully with the floral, citrus taste of the clementines, which I've ramped up further with the Cointreu. I'd say it's a flavour match made in heaven!

Would you like to make some for yourself? Well, no worries, here's my recipe :

Ingredients

1200g clementines - about 8 clementines
2 medium sized lemons
2 kg jam-making sugar
2.5 litres of water
1 tablespoonful of green cardamon pods split lengthways
8 tablespoonfuls (120 ml) of Cointreau
Certo apple pectin for emergency use if you can't get the mixture to set as you may not have enough pips in the clementines to give you all the pectin you need.

Method

A: Day 1

1. You really need to start this recipe the day before. The first thing to do is wash the fruit in some fresh, clean water. Then juice the clementines and lemons, finely slice them and let them soak overnight in their juice to soften up the skins a bit and release some of their natural pectin. I half them and extract all the precious pips, which I place on a saucer for safe keeping. These are full of pectin, and will help your marmalade to set.

2. Take all the pips and tie them in a little square of muslin. Draw the four corners together, and tie them with a piece of kitchen string to make a parcel like this:

3. Place the skins in a large ceramic bowl, pour the juice over the top, and pop your parcel of pips into the mix. 

Cover with cling film and leave overnight to allow the juice to work its magic on the skins.

Day 2

4.Take an old saucer and put it in the freezer to get it really cold. You will use this to test the consistency of your marmalade later in the process.

5. Put your citrus skins/juice/pips mixture in a large saucepan. Add 2.5 litres of fresh water and bring to the boil. Once it reaches the boil, turn down the heat and leave to simmer gently for about two and a half hours until the skins are soft and slightly translucent.

6. While you’re waiting for the skins to cook you should sterilise your jam jars. Wash both the jars and their lids in hot soapy water. Rinse well with warm clean water. Dry the outsides but not the insides. Place them on a baking tray (open top ends up) with the lids (top sides up) on a separate tray in an oven pre-heated to 150 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

7.You should also warm your sugar. With about half an hour to go before the lemons are ready, weigh it out and put it in the oven at about 150 degrees Celsius in a large flat dish.

8. When the citrus skins in the saucepan have been boiled to the point where they are soft and translucent, add the sugar, cardamon pods (split in half length-ways) and a knob of butter (this helps to stop it burning, according to my mum) and bring to a rolling boil, which is a gentle boil that isn’t too violent – think of gently churning rapids downstream from a large waterfall. Stir occasionally and let everything boil for another fifteen minutes or so until it starts to set. You could use a thermometer for this stage to check the temperature. The marmalade should start to set somewhere around 104 degrees Celsius.

9. When it reaches this stage, and you see it starting to thicken, you need to do the frozen saucer test. Take your saucer from the freezer and drip a little drop of the marmalade onto it. Leave it for a few seconds and then gently push it with your fingertip. If the marmalade is ready it should have formed a thin skin on top and you should be getting wrinkles when you apply pressure. It may still seem to be too liquid for spreading on your toast, but if there is a very thin skin with wrinkles you are good to go. The mixture will thicken/ solidify a bit more once it cools, and sometimes it will carry on setting for a few days after. This is the trickiest stage of the process, so do keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway if you haven’t reached this point let the mixture boil on for another three or four minutes and test again. Keep going until you get that skin-and-wrinkle-thing happening on your saucer, but be really careful as it can easily burn if it overheats (and, believe me, cleaning the bottom of the saucepan when it does is a nightmare job).

If you can't seem to get the stuff to set you can always add a spoonful or two of pectin and watch for it to do its magic. I keep a bottle of Certo apple pectin for these occasions.

10. Once the marmalade has started to set remove the saucepan from the heat, and add the Cointreau. Be careful as the hot mixture may spit a little when you introduce the cold liquid. Stir thoroughly and leave for about 15 minutes to cool. Skim the cardamon pods out of the mixture with a slatted spoon while you're waiting for the mixture to cool down.  This cooling will also allow the mixture to set a little more. Stir it again before you ladle it into the sterilised jam jars. By stirring it once it has thickened like this you will ensure an even distribution of peel throughout the mixture.

11. Top the jars of marmalade with waxed disks and put the lids on.

12. When everything has cooled down a bit you can add some stick-on labels.

Enjoy with hot buttered toast and a good cup of Rosie Lee!

All the best,

Bonny x

and if you've got the marmalade bug you might also like to try my lemon and lavender recipe, which you can find:  here.

Boozy Bejeweled Christmas Cake Recipe

Now is a really good time to get cracking with your Chrimbo cakes. They really do improve, just sitting in the tin, waiting for the Big Day to arrive - especially if, like me, you treat them to the occasional tipple along the way.

Emi and I were really busy last week, during the half term holidays, baking loads of cakes. I like to make a few extra for friends and family whilst I've got the wind in my sails. My recipe is an old family one that I've tweaked a little bit to suit my own personal style. My Grandma used to make these cakes using sherry, but I prefer Marsala wine. I've also chosen my favourite dried fruit from my local Turkish grocer, which is a rather different combination from the one she used. In fact I'm sure my dear old Gran, living in rural County Tyrone twenty years' ago, would never have heard tell of things like dried barberries. I've also chosen not to decorate the cakes with marzipan and icing. I love almonds, but I really dislike almond flavourings, so marzipan is not a favourite of mine. Instead I'm using glacé fruits with a glaze. I love the colours and the glossiness of this topping, and it's a super quick, easy way to decorate a cake. I also like to make small cakes (6"/ 15 cm diameter) rather than big cakes so that people don't get bored with them, although they will last for months in their tins.

If you'd like to give this little number a go, it's a very quick, simple cake to make. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for 2 small 6"/ 15cm diameter cakes or 1 large 12"/ 30 cm diameter cake 

1 kg/ 2 lb 4 oz of mixed dried fruits.  I used 250 g/ 9 oz golden jumbo raisins, 250 g/ 9 oz brown jumbo raisins, 250 g/ 9 oz dried cranberries, 125 g/ 4 1/2 oz  dried barberries and 125 g/ 4 1/2 oz dried papaya, but you can chose whichever mix of dried fruit you prefer.

175g / 6 oz plain cake-making flour

200g/ 7 oz soft brown sugar

zest and juice of 1 large orange

zest and juice of 1 large lemon

250g/ 9 oz butter at room temperature

100g/ 3 1/2 oz ground almonds

100g/ 3 1/2 oz flaked almonds

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaped teaspoonfuls of mixed spice

1 heaped teaspoonful of powdered cinnamon

1/2 teaspoonful of powdered cloves

4 large eggs - beaten

1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract

150 ml/ 5 fluid ounces of Marsala Wine

Method

1. Choose a large saucepan. Place the dried fruit, orange and lemon juice and zest, Marala wine, butter and sugar in the saucepan and heat over a medium heat until the mixture comes to the boil. Then reduce the heat and allow to simmer gently for 5 minutes. Mix thoroughly and remove from the heat. Leave to cool for about 30 minutes. 

2. Whilst the mixture from 1. above is cooling heat your oven to 150º C/ 130º C with a fan/ Gas Mark 2 and line your cake tins with grease-proof baking parchment. You'll need a circle for the bottom and a long rectangle to line the sides. I usually fix it in place with a spot of melted butter. I also like to use spring release cake tins, which make it easier to get the cakes out at the end of the process. 

3. When you've got them lined on the inside, wrap them with newspaper on the outside and tie it in place with some string so that they cook, and cool down afterwards, really slowly. This ought to help prevent your cakes from cracking.

4. After your mixture from 1. has cooled down a bit add all the remaining ingredients, sieving the flour and mixing it thoroughly to make sure that everything is evenly distributed and there are no pockets of flour. 

5. Tip the mixture into the prepared baking tins and place them in the centre of the oven. Cook for about 2 hours - until a skewer inserted into the top of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool. 

6. Make a few discreet holes with a skewer - going in from the top. These will form little channels so that the wine that you feed the cake between now and Christmas gets evenly distributed. 

7. When the cakes have completely cooled, wrap them in some grease-proof baking parchment and store them in cake tins. Feed each cake every 10 days or so with 2 teaspoonfuls of Marsala wine. Don't feed it for a week immediately before you decorate it.  

And would you also like my recipe for the decoration on top? Ok, no problem.

Ingredients for cake topping

1 heaped tablespoonful of apricot jam or honey

2 tablespoonfuls of brandy

Whatever combination of glacé fruits and nuts that you'd like to use. I chose some glacé cherries and apricots with some roasted pecan nuts.

Method

1. Place the jam and brandy in a small saucepan. Place over a medium heat until the jam melts, stirring until the two are evenly mixed.

2. Leave the jam and brandy mixture to cool. I keep mine stored in a small jam pot in the fridge so that I can use it for the other cakes that are in the pipeline.

3. Arrange your fruit and nuts over the top of your cake, and very gently brush them with the jam and brandy mixture using a pastry brush. 

4. Wrap up your cake for presentation. I used a rectangular food doily, cut lengthways as an internal wrapper with some brown paper on the outside tied up with a festive ribbon. 

Enjoy with friends and a nice cup of Rosy Lee. 

All the best,

Bonny x

As shared on Creative Mondays

Christmas Chutney ...

Now I know that I’m liable to court your wrath by mentioning the dreaded C-word in September … and I’m really not the sort of person who starts her festive countdown months in advance. Quite the contrary: I’m the demented woman who shops-against-the-clock on Christmas Eve. The thing is we had a surplus of apples from an old heritage-variety apple-tree - with a name that I just can’t remember. 

These apples look fabulous: all red and glossy.


And when you cut them in two the lovely blush of the skin goes all the way into the white of the apple’s flesh. 


They look divine - both inside and out, but they have a really strange texture: kind of spongey, and a slightly tart aftertaste, which means that they are less than fabulous to eat.

Now over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers we are idealistically opposed to wasting stuff, so, rather than composting them, I decided to use them to make chutney. Now here’s the thing: with any good chutney it only really comes into its own if it’s left for at least a couple of months to mature in the jar. So, doing the maths, if you want to make some chutney for Christmas ... now would be a really good time to get going.

This recipe of mine is very simple to make; it tastes divine: not too sweet, and beautifully aromatic; and when it’s cooking your kitchen smells like heaven. Want to give it a go? Well here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients


500 g/ 1lb 2oz red onions
1.5 kg./ 3lb 5oz eating apples
600 ml/ 1 pint malt vinegar
400 g/ 14oz unrefined Demerara sugar
20 g/ 3/4oz salt
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  dried white mulberries
160 g/ 5 1/2oz dried barberries
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  golden raisins
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  chopped dried apricots
20 g/ 3/4oz  cumin
20 g/ 3/4oz cinnamon
20 g/  3/4oz mixed spice


And here’s what you need to do:

Method

1. Peel the onions and chop them very finely.


2. Wash the apples, removing any stems and leaves. Core and coarsely chop them, leaving their skins intact. Take care to cut out any damaged parts.


3. Place the chopped apples, onions and all the other ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir carefully so that they don’t stick on the bottom, but be careful not to mush the apples up while you’re stirring. And, yes, mush is a technical, culinary term. When they start to bubble, turn the heat down and keep on a gentle simmer for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half - until the mixture reaches the right consistency for chutney. You should be able to drag your spoon across the bottom of the pan and leave a furrow in its wake when the chutney has reached a perfect chutney-consistency. Be careful to keep stirring all the while so that you don’t get a burnt layer on the bottom of the pan.


4. In the meantime, whilst the chutney is cooking wash and sterilise your jam pots. Depending on how things boil down you'll need 6 to 7 medium sized jam pots. You need to wash them thoroughly in hot soapy water. Rinse them well with fresh, clean water and dry the outsides only. Heat an oven to 150 degrees C, and place the washed jam pots inside on a baking tray - open side up. Place the washed lids on another tray, facing up. Bake in the oven in this way for at least 15 minutes to sterilise.


5. When your chutney is ready, take it off the heat and leave it to stand for a few minutes so that it cools down a little. This will help with the distribution of the various ingredients i.e. you’re less likely to get all the heavier stuff at the bottom.

6. Stir gently to ensure an even consistency and then spoon the mixture into the jam pots, place a wax paper disk in the mouth of each pot and close the lid.


7. Leave to cool and then apply the labels and any decorative paper tops.

I ended up with seven medium-sized pots of chutney in all - about 2.1 Kg/ 4 1/2 lb. of chutney.

Now, as these little mammas are not all going to be consumed here, I’ve prettied a few of them up to go as gifts to friends and family. You can buy all the bits and pieces ready-made to jolly them up, but where's the fun in that?

I find that a few hand-written labels announcing that the jars contain “Christmas Chutney” and circles cut out of festive wrapping paper trimmed with contrasting ribbon or ric-rac work quite well. If you have some wrapping paper that’s a reasonably weight, it should make first class jar-topping prettifiers. All you need to do is turn it face-side down on the kitchen table. Using a saucer or plate of a size that will work with the height of the jam pot being decorated, draw a pencil circle on the back of the paper and carefully cut it out. Place this over the top of the jam pot, and hold in place with a transparent elastic band. If the paper is beautiful but a bit too light and flimsy you can add a bit more body with some sticky-back plastic. Apply the plastic to the wrong-side, and cut out to fit. 

Sometimes a bit of brown paper with a contrasting paper doily makes for a good look.

Whatever you go for, top it off with a bit of ribbon or ric-rac and you’ll have a good-looking, super-tasty present all ready to go when the time comes. Job done!

As I've explained, the chutney works best when it’s left to rest and mature for a few months. Then, when you open a pot, it will be all rich, and unctuous and delicious.

Enjoy with your Chrimbo dinner!

All the best,

Bonny x

Bubble tea ... bubbilicious ...

Not being one to miss a trend I've been on the look-out recently for some bubble tea. It's supposed to be the new big thing. Well this morning, as I was racing around, I got to try some.

Here it is:

It was a sort of coldish day, so I chose a hot tea. This is mango green tea with mango pearls - or rather, mango-flavoured tapioca balls - at the bottom. You can't see them because they're the same colour as the drink.

Here's what they looked like when I got to the bottom:

What did I think?

I had expected it to be more ... well,  more bubbly like a glass of Perrier or perhaps more gently bubbly like a glass of Badoit. But this tea had no conventional bubbles at all.  When I slurped up one of the mango pearls through the straw I had a sort of bubble-like sensation as it burst on my tongue.  They were kind of weird, like globules of very taut frogspawn, but it was a good weird. And, just for the record: no, I have never eaten frogspawn (!).

The tea itself was delicious, once I got used to the idea of drinking a hot drink through a straw.

I can imagine how the cold versions would go down a treat on a hot summer's day. I can see my sister-in-law and I ordering them as we gossip and watch our boys play together in the sun.

 Overall I though it was a very refreshing drink, and a welcome change from my usual coffee hit. I'll definitely order another next time I'm passing.

Bonny x

Happy Saint Patrick's Day !

The very top of the morning to you all! May Saint Patrick smile upon you, and send his blessings to your door.

My mother says that if it's nice on 17th March, it's because the good saint has interceded with the Big Boss to make sure that his feast day is dry and fine; he's turned the sunny side up, and that's a sign that the rest of the spring will be fine. Well, this morning, I'm happy to report that the weather is pretty glorious here in London.

It's a really big day back home. They have a bank holiday with all sorts of music, parties and parades. But over here in England it's just another day, and I always feel out of step as a result. It's like when you know you really ought to be doing something else, and you can't help but feel uncomfortable because you're not getting on with it. Well, deep down in my DNA, I know that I really should be having a huge, all-day party today, but instead I'm doing the school run and going about my business as normal. Pah! That sucks!

As a B-plan I'm going to have a little supper party tonight for my nearest and dearest. We can't get too exuberant as tomorrow's a school day, but I'm sure we'll make the best of it.

I've bought a side of Irish smoked salmon as a starter. Then we'll have boiled ham with colcannon, and finish off with some old fashioned rice pudding, flavoured with vanilla and a bay leaf or two. It's not very flashy, but it's honest Irish food.

In case you'd like to make something Irish in honour of our patron saint, or just for the fun of it, I'll give you the low-down on how to make Colcannon, the dish that, without a doubt, has kept generations of our ancestors alive. It's the ultimate comfort food, about which songs have been sung and poems have been written over the years:

Did you ever eat colannon
When t'was made with yellow cream
And the kale and praties blended
Like a picture in a dream?
Did you ever scoop a hole on top
To hold the melting lake
of the clover-flavoured butter
Which your mother used to make?

Yes, yes, yes and yes again! Well, ok, my mum didn't actually make the butter, but I can certainly tick all the other boxes.

Colcannon

Anyway if you'd like to make this potato nectar here's what you need and here's how to do it:

Ingredients for 4 people

3/4 lb/ 350 g kale or Swiss chard (you could use Savoy cabbage, but I prefer the flavour of kale)
1 1/2 lb/ 775g potatoes
50 ml double cream or crème fraîche
(I prefer the flavour of crème fraîche, but it's not very authentically Irish!)
50 ml milk
1 large spring onion chopped finely
1 oz/ 25g butter
200 g bacon lardons

Method

1. Wash and peel the potatoes. Place in boiling water and cook until soft enough to mash.
2. Wash and chop the kale. Steam it for a couple or three of minutes. I usually do this over the saucepan with the potatoes in. When cooked drain off excess moisture on some kitchen paper and set to one side.
3. Fry the bacon lardons, drain of excess fat on some kitchen paper and set to one side.
4. Very, very finely chop the spring onion.
5. Roughly mash the potato, add the chopped spring onion, cream and milk and mash some more until they reach a puree texture. Season to your taste.
6. Add the steamed kale and mix so that it's evenly distributed throughout the potato.
7. Serve with the bacon lardons sprinkled on top.

Enjoy!

Bonny x

Mulberry granola

I started making mulberry granola by accident!

Mulberry Granola

You see I'd set out to make flapjacks, but the recipe went disastrously wrong. I'd forgotten to add mashed up banana and grated apple, which were binding agents in a very healthy flapjack recipe that I make for Emi, my son, from time to time.

There was an ominous smell of burning that ought to have had me running to the oven to check things out, but I was busy multi-tasking and didn't manage to tear myself away from whatever I was doing in the other room. As a result, when I finally opened the door I was faced with something that was much too crumbly to cut, and that wouldn't hold together in the way in which a flapjack ought to.

So I nibbled a bit, and it didn't taste too bad. I looked at the mess, scratched my head and wondered if there was anything I could do to salvage the situation. All that luxurious dried fruit seemed too rich to feed to the wild birds. After a moment's thought it occurred to me that my tray full of crumbs looked a bit like a slightly overcooked granola mix. Bingo! Eureka! That was it. I'd inadvertently made granola! I tried it with a few spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt and it wasn't half bad. It wasn't perfect as I'd burnt it slightly, but with a bit of tweaking I reckoned I could make something really tasty next time round.

And that was how my granola recipe was born: by pulling victory out of the jaws of defeat!

Anyway, enough of telling stories. Here's what you need, and here's how to go about it if you'd like to give it a try.

Ingredients

250 g/ 9 oz rolled porridge oats
50 g/ 2 oz butter
2 tablespoonfuls of chunky peanut butter
3 tablespoonfuls of golden syrup or maple syrup (whichever you prefer)
200 g/ 7 oz of mixed dried fruit. This is what I added today, starting from top left and going clockwise: 40g barberries, 40g apricots, 40 g papaya, 40g mulberries, and 40 g golden sultanas.

100 g/ 3 1|2 oz mixed seeds [I use a mixture of roughly equal weights of golden linseed, pumpkin seed and sunflower seed]

Method

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C/ 320 degrees F

Mix the rolled oats, dried fruit and seeds together to get an even, uniform mix.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat with the peanut butter and the syrup. Stir well to get a smooth, uniform liquid.

Add the melted butter/ peanut butter and syrup to the oat mixture and stir well so that the oats are evenly coated by the butter mixture.

Line a baking tray with a sheet of baking paper and tip the oat mixture onto it, spreading it out so that it is evenly distributed in a thin layer on the tray.

Bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes until golden and crispy.

Cool and store in an airtight container.

Eat and enjoy!

I was running around with no time to do anything last week and had to eat some store-bought granola. It cost me three times as much and wasn't a patch on this scrumptious stuff.

Bonny x

Hound Tor, Dartmoor, and a slow-cooker dinner

Yesterday we went to Hound Tor, which was as spectacular as it always is. Somehow, now that we have a hound of our own, it seemed apt.

I love the wildness of Dartmoor. There's something primitive, something truly primordial about it. And Hound Tor is one of the best bits. It's a wild, unforgiving place, where nature concedes nothing. They say that it inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write the Hound of the Baskervilles.

We strolled along the avenue that runs between the massive granite walls of the Tor.

Then we climbed the shoulder of the hill on which the Tor stands to admire the bleak landscape all around. 

Over the other side there is a little path that leads down through the bracken to a forgotten village, where no one has lived for over half a millennium. It's an eerie place comprising several houses and barns. No one knows exactly what happened, and why the people who once lived there left. One theory is that it was abandoned in about 1350 as a result of the infamous Black Death. Whatever the way of it, the site must have been a desolate, inhospitable place to have called home. Even on a warm sunny day, it feels sort of chilly there.

It's a tricky place to photograph and I only had a little point-and-shoot camera with me, which wasn't up to the job so I'll have to remember to do it justice next time.

After all that walking it was lovely to open the front door and immediately smell our dinner bubbling away in the slow-cooker. 

I'm a really big fan of my slow cooker. It's not an expensive, flashy model, but it's great for those days when we're out and I need to conjure up some food almost as soon as we get back home.

Here's my very simple recipe for: 

Sausage stew

12 good pork sausages

200 g/ 7 ounces of bacon lardons

400 ml/ 2 cups of good vegetable stock

2 medium onions - sliced

6 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

sage

Method

1. Fry the sausages so that they have an attractive colour, but don't cook them right through.

2. Remove sausages from the frying pan and place in the bottom of the slow cooker pot.

3. Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry in the same saucepan as the sausages. When done, tip over the sausages in the pot, and add some chopped sage or a good shake of dry sage if you haven't got any of the fresh stuff to hand.

4. Fry the bacon lardons in the saucepan and sprinkle evenly over the sausage and onion mix in the pot.

5. Peel the potatoes, and finely chop. Then layer over the sausage mixture in the pot.

6. Pour 400 ml of hot, seasoned vegetable stock evenly over the potatoes. 

7. Place the lid on the pot and leave to cook for three and a half to four hours on the high setting.

Simple, hearty food! I served it up with some mushrooms fried in butter with spring onions and garlic, washed down with a nice glass of Rioja.

This recipe will feed 3 to 4 people, depending on the size of the servings: will you be wanting three sausages or four sausages per person? You can do the maths!

Anyway, tuck in and enjoy,

Bonny x

Lemon & Lavender marmalade anyone?

Today I’m making marmalade, and my whole house smells of lemons and lavender. It’s reminding me of summer and sunshine and big blue skies. And when all around is grey and rainy, that’s making me just a little bit happy.

I’m fussy about my marmalade. I like it to be not too sweet, very citrusy with a fragrant hint of something aromatic – I like notes of cardamom, elderflower and lavender, but probably not all at the same time. The peel has to be included, but must be soft and very thinly sliced. When I hold the jar of not-too-sweet loveliness up to the light I like to see tones of bright golden sunshine. Nothing sludgy or brown for me, thank you very much, and I’d never dream of adding a heavy flavour like whiskey. No, not ever. That would just be wrong.

I'm not a big fan of the supermarkets, so I try to shop with the independents as much as possible. Here in West Ealing we have Cudi Foods, the most fabulous store in town. It’s an independent ethnic grocery shop with wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables piled high outside. Inside you find the very nicest bottled pulses, spices, Turkish breads and other wonderful things to eat. And I’m not talking Harrods' prices. No, this is a place where regular people come to buy great produce. In fact it’s usually cheaper than the big supermarkets.

So, on my way back from school yesterday, I headed over to Cudi for some lemons. Feast your eyes on these beauties:

With any marmalade or jam-making, the basic recipe is fruit plus twice the weight of granulated sugar. I find that I don’t need to add any setting agent to this marmalade as the pectin in the fruit and the pips is plenty strong enough to get it to the right consistency.

My basic jam making kit comprises one very large saucepan, a long wooden spoon that doesn’t get lost in said saucepan, a jam thermometer, clean jam jars with fitting lids (you could buy these, but there’s nothing wrong with saving the glass jars that you buy other things in and re-using them after a good clean), some waxed paper disks, a soup ladle and a pair of oven gloves for lifting the hot jars - and that’s pretty much it.

Check this lot out:

Now down to business, here’s what you need, and here’s how to go about it:

Ingredients :-

About 10 lemons (weight 950 g)

Twice the weight of the boiled-down lemons of granulated sugar (1.6 Kg. in this case)

Two heaped tablespoonfuls of edible lavender seeds. Or, as an alternative if it makes your life easier, you could buy some lavender-infused sugar. I save my own lavender flowers, but last year’s crop looked a bit too manky to risk in the pot, so I bought a 250g box of lavender-infused sugar and used that as part of my sugar addition.

1 teaspoonful of citric acid (This is an optional extra. The recipe will work just fine without this ingredient. I use it, because I like the extra zing it adds to the lemony flavour. You can buy it in an ethnic grocery shop such as Cudi.)

2.8 litres of Water          
 

Knob of butter

Method

Day 1

The first step is to give the lemons a really good scrub, and remove the eyes (the little circular bits that come off the ends, where they used to join on the tree).

Then they need to be cut in half and juiced. Save the juice.

Remove the pips, and save them on a saucer.

Now slice the skins of the lemons into the thinnest slices that you can possibly manage without losing any of your digits.

Place the slices into a large non-metallic bowl, add the lemon juice and give everything a bit of a stir.

Place all of the saved pips onto a piece of muslin (you can buy this in any good kitchen shop), and tie to make a little package with a piece of string. The idea is to hold the pips and not let them mix through the marmalade. They will help your mixture to set, and the parcelling-them-up business will make it easier to discard them before bottling.

Place the muslin parcel of pips in the bowl with the sliced lemons in their juice and add 2.8 litres of fresh water. Give the mixture a bit of a stir-about, and leave covered in a clean t-towel overnight so that the acidity of the liquid will soften the skins.

Day 2 - roughly 24 hours later

Take an old saucer and put it in the freezer to get it crazy cold. You will use this to test the consistency of your marmalade later in the process.

Put your lemon skin/juice/pips/water mixture in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Leave to boil gently for about two and a half hours until the skins are soft and slightly translucent.

While you’re waiting for the skins to cook you should sterilise your jam jars. Wash both the jars and their lids in hot soapy water. Rinse well with warm clean water. Dry the outsides but not the insides. Place them on a baking tray (open top ends up) with the lids (top sides up) on a separate tray in an oven pre-heated to 150 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

You should also ‘warm’ your sugar. With about half an hour to go before the lemons are ready, weigh it out and put it in the oven at about 150 degrees Celsius in a large flat dish.

After the lemons in the saucepan have been boiled to the point where they are soft and translucent, add the sugar, citric acid and the lavender seeds with a knob of butter (this helps to stop it burning, according to my mum) and bring to a rolling boil, which is a gentle boil that isn’t too violent – think of gently churning rapids downstream from a large waterfall. Stir occasionally and let everything boil for another fifteen to twenty minutes or so until it starts to set. You should use your thermometer for this stage to check the temperature. The marmalade will start to set at around 106 degrees Celsius.

When it reaches this stage, and you see it starting to thicken, you need to do the frozen saucer test.

Take your saucer from the freezer and drip a little drop of the marmalade onto it. Leave it for a few seconds and then gently push it with your fingertip. If the marmalade is ready it should have formed a thin skin on top and you should be getting wrinkles when you apply pressure. It may still seem to be too liquid for spreading on your toast, but if there is a very thin skin with wrinkles you are good to go. The mixture will thicken/ solidify a bit more once it cools. This is the trickiest stage of the process, so do keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway if you haven’t reached this point let the mixture boil on for another three or four minutes and test again. Keep going until you get that skin-and-wrinkle-thing happening on your saucer, but be really careful as it can easily burn if it overheats (and, believe me, cleaning the bottom of the saucepan when it does is a nightmare job).

When the magic point arrives (skin and wrinkles on the saucer) take the saucepan straight off the heat, and let everything sit for about 10 minutes before starting to bottle it into the jars.  This slight cooling should result in the optimum amount of peel being dispersed through the mix rather than all settling at the bottom of the jars. Remove your little parcel of pips and fill each jar to the neck. I use my oven gloves and a soup ladle that I've washed down with boiling water for this part of the operation. Then place a disk of waxed paper on top, and put on the lids.

When they’ve cooled down you can apply labels and pretty them up in whatever way takes your fancy. They go down well as little treats for friends or as an alternative offering at the school cake sale.  Keep them stored in a cool, dark place and they should be good for about a year from the date on which they’ve been made. I keep my stash on the out-of reach top shelves in my kitchen cupboards. I’m a bit too short to make comfortable use of these shelves for every-day things, so they make a great larder for storing unopened preserves.   

For alternatives to the lavender you may like to consider adding some elderflower cordial with the sugar for a floral note. Alternatively, at the sugar stage, add a couple of tablespoonfuls of green cardamom seeds, split in half lengthways. 

And finally a photo of my not-too-sweet jars of sunshiny loveliness:

I got about 1.6kg of jam.

What do you think?

Totally, fragrantly delicious!

Go on, try some on your toast, and think of happy, sunshiny days.

Bonny x