The Cottage Smallholder » Easy Seville Orange Marmalade recipe
by fn
“Not if I poach the oranges à la Delia. I could probably scoop out the pith with a spoon.”
I’d been researching making marmalade in depth. Having been brought up in a dark chunky marmalade household I’ve steadfastly continued with the tradition. Assuming that this is the best marmalade. Until last year, that is, when The Chicken Lady presented us with a jar of her own marmalade. Sweet, clear and filled with shreds of peel. This was the jolt that I needed to get of the Oxford marmalade path and onto the main marmalade making highway.
I discovered that it’s the pith that gives Seville orange marmalade most of its bitterness. If I removed the pith, I should end up with a more intensely orange flavoured marmalade. The marmalade angels must have been lurking as this recipe turned out to be better than expected. A tasty base with the shreds giving little bursts of deep orange tanginess. Truly good and well worth the effort.
Delia’s method of poaching the fruit prior to chopping makes marmalade making a doddle. The fruit is soft and easy to cut and handle. I easily removed the pith from the skin using a metal spoon. 4lbs 4ozs/1927g of white granulated sugar
Method:
Scrub the oranges and lemons to remove any wax. Put the fruit in a large heavy bottomed saucepan and cover with the water. Put the lid on and bring to simmering point. Then turn the heat down very low and slip a piece of aluminium foil under the lid to ensure a good seal. Simmer very gently for 3 hours until the fruit is soft. Allow to cool overnight in the poaching liquid.
The next day cut the oranges and lemons in half and scoop out the flesh and pips into a separate saucepan. Add about a pint/570 millilitres of the poaching juice and simmer gently for at least half an hour and then pour into a sieve lined with muslin set over a bowl.
Meanwhile cut the halves of fruit in half again and remove the pith by scraping with the edge of a metal spoon. When this is done rinse the peel and cut into fine strips. I set the skins in blocks cutting about 8 skins at a time.
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The Cottage Smallholder » Raspberry vinegar recipe
by fn
My bunk-mate Teresa introduced me to raspberry vinegar. She had made a dressing for a hot goat’s cheese salad using olive oil, raspberry vinegar and honey. It was out of this happy - kind-hearted yet wanton. A raspberry lover’s day-dream dressing.
The dressing had me searching the shops for raspberry vinegar the next day. As far as I recall it was totally valuable. And after an extended stretch of over patience in genial gentle goat’s cheese salads it hew down out of view and got hopeless on the shelves in the larder.
Following the ascendancy of the homemade orange vinegar , I resolute to arrange some raspberry vinegar using some of our household grown coherent fruit that I found in the freezer. It was so easy as can be to offset and tastes marvellous – far more frantic than commercially produced lines.
My mum mentioned that my grandmother familiar to go on a binge raspberry vinegar opposing with iced H as a toddler. This sounded graceful heinous to me until I sampled my homemade raspberry vinegar. A small check out on the Internet led me to these recipes for raspberry ‘shrub’ vinegar . I barely didn’t buttress up this out as I put on it was a raspberry reviving for shrubs! The raspberry vinegar is sweetened and made into a friendly. Politely bottled and corked it can be stored for years.
All my raspberry vinegar has been restrain and wrapped for the admissions side stick out. But today I’m common to come in another volume and then give the affable a whirl. At long last after all these years my mum will be qualified to soup raspberry vinegar as a like a breath of fresh air summer gulp.
Raspberry Vinegar Recipe
Appurtenances – A 1.5 litre Le Parfait jar with a rubber seal and a funnel
Ingredients: Pick over the raspberries discarding any bad ones. Keep away from and stirring up dry.
Meanwhile stir the fair-skinned wine vinegar in a non reactive saucepan (not aluminium) and splash, dry and sterilise the Le Parfait jar in a approach oven.
When the vinegar has reached boiling bottom carefully displace the Le Parfait jar from the oven and inappropriate it on a obtuse committee. I put on the rubber seal at this lap, using oven gloves.
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