Seville Orange Marmalade

Bitterness is viewed harshly in this overly sweet world. To be bitter is to be consumed with an intense animosity, lashed by the rawness of winter winds, suffering the distress of a galling shame. Yet bitter enemies, bitter rancor, bitter hatred create all the finest elements of great art, surely?

The man chooses bitter in winter, the bitter that is an English dark brown beer. Served at room temperature, which is a surprise to some like the young Spanish woman I saw at an airport bar who wanted to return the pint she’d just bought because it was warm and flat. The barman’s refusal made her bitter  (his explanation that is the way it is meant to be drunk left her confused).

In Brindisa the other day I asked whether their oranges were waxed or not, Spanish citrus being a particular highlight late into winter. Not these ones, the guy said, try this as he handed me a chunk of fresh bread with a generous dollop of marmalade. Amazing – bitter fruit, proper thick shreds of peel, intense jam – quite a mouthful. Being so good on bread not toast was such a surprise I told the man about it that night. He makes weekend breakfast that is always toast - marmalade for him and vegemite for me and coffee for us both. I went back to Brindisa and asked to buy a jar of their very fine marmalade. Ah no madam the nice man said, we sell the oranges and give you this and handed me a small slip of paper, which is how this week I came to make something I’d never done before.

Here is the recipe.

Seville Orange Marmalade

Marmalade can be made with all kinds of citrus and was, indeed, initially made in Portugal using quince but Seville oranges are particularly suited because of the high pectin levels in the pith and pips and, of course, their wonderful bitterness 

Makes about 5 kgs - you need a lot of jars

1.5kg Seville oranges - buy big ones, as it will cut the work down a bit

3 litres water

Juice of 2 lemons

3kg granulated sugar - the weight of sugar is always double that of the fruit

I found it easiest to set up a kind of work station before I started to reduce the amount of sticky mess I was guaranteed to make. You need a BIG preserving pan, mine is 25cm deep with a diameter of 30cm which holds vast amounts. Put the pan on the bench to your left. Next to it put your chopping board, knife and citrus juicer. On the right hand side put a large piece of muslim - at least 30 cm square - on top of a large flat plate. You put all the pips - and there's a LOT of them in Seville oranges - as well as the membrane from the juiced oranges into the muslin, then bring the corners together and tie up the bundle with string before you add it to the jam pan. It is the magic bag that means the marmalade will set when it's done.

Scrub all the fruit with warm water and a clean scourer, then cut each orange in half and squeeze out the juice, piling up the juiced orange halves as you go. Juice the two lemons and discard the shells -  use them to soften your elbows first! 

Tip all the juice into the pan. Pull any remaining membrane out of the oranges and add it to the muslin, along with all the pips.  Bring the edges of the muslin together and tie it tightly with kitchen string so nothing can escape into the pot. 

Slice the orange peel thinly to the size you like, making sure it's fairly consistent. Don't be tempted to remove the pith, it contains a lot of pectin to help the marmalade set.

Add the orange slices to the pan with the juice, the muslin bag containing all the pips and membrane, and the 3 litres of water. Put the pan onto a medium heat and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat so it simmers gently. Let it bubble away for a couple of hours until the peel is soft and the liquid has reduced by about a third.

Take the pan off the heat and use some tongs to take the muslin bag out. Put it on a plate to cool a bit, then squeeze the bag back over the pan of liquid, catching all the  surprisingly thick juice. Discard the sad sack.

Add the sugar to the pan and, still off the heat, stir it until it is all dissolved.

Return the pan to the heat and bring it back to the boil over a fairly high heat. Boil the jam rapidly for about 15-20 minutes, until the setting point is reached. 

Setting point is what it sounds like, and the best way to test is with a sugar thermometer - when the temperature reaches 105C/220F you're good to go. You can also put a plate into the fridge and,  when the mixture has boiled for 15 minutes, spoon a little onto the cold plate and put it back into the fridge for a minute or two. If the jam then sets enough to wrinkle when you push it with your finger, you're good to go.

Take the pan off the heat, skim off any scum, and then all the marmalade to cool for about 15  minutes so that the peel floats rather than sinks.

Whilst it's cooling wash your jars and lids in warm soapy water then dry them on a tray in the oven at about 160C for five minutes.  Leave them on the tray to fill them, you'll have way less mess!

Fill the still warm jars with hot marmalade and put the lids on tightly immediately. Allow to cool before you label them. Eat with pleasure.

Lots of lovely advice here about how to enjoy the whole marmalade making process.

Chocolate Cardamom Pie

 Valentine's Day today and though - yes! - I subscribe to the notion that every day should be a special day for you and your love, it's nice occasionally to add a little extra sparkle just because you can. The v best sparkle I produced this week was definitely this lightly spiced chocolate pie. It is elegantly simple and simply elegant - and thus, perfect.

Cardamom is an intriguing spice, relative to ginger and distantly also the banana, it is popular in a variety of cuisines. It has delicate flavours of citrus and smoke with sweet notes of eucalyptus in there as well. The Scandis love it in baking, indeed I was surprised to find it is the mystery delight in the fikka cinnamon buns, the Dutch add it generously to spekulaas biscuits and it adds richness to Turkish coffee. It's a key ingredient in Indian cooking, used in everything from curries to sweetmeats and chai.

Split green cardamom pod

It has a long history too as an aid to erotica. Mentioned in Tales of Arabian Nights as a popular ingredient of love potions, allegedly boosting sexual desire in both men and women, inducing a good mood all round. Enticing Herbs and Seductive Spices suggests Arabs add cardamom to beverages and drink the mixture as an aphrodisiac, They also sprinkle powdered cardamom, ginger and cinnamon over boiled onions and green peas to promote erotic vigour. In India, powdered cardamom boiled with milk is consumed with honey at night to prevent impotence and premature ejaculation. Also known as a cure for bad breath, kissing too is made more pleasurable...

So use it with abandon to spice this luscious pie and serve with a generous dollop of creme fraiche to the one(s) you love. You need to make this a few hours ahead as it needs time to set - something I see as a definite positive as there's no last minute panic. A couple of lessons learned I should share - when you've poured the chocolate into the cooked pie case put it into the fridge without covering it. I decided to cover it with cling film which promptly dropped into the dark liquid and messed the perfectly smooth finish. Also use a fine mesh strainer for the cocoa but get the lumps out before you hold it over the pie if you want a reasonable approximation of a light and even dusting.

Chocolate Cardamom Pie

25cm sweet pastry tart case, cooked - I used Paul Hollywood's recipe, highly recommend
10 green cardamom pods or 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
350ml double cream
200g dark chocolate, 80% cocoa solids or thereabouts, broken into smallish chunks
30g unsalted butter
Cocoa powder for dusting the finished tart

If using whole cardamom pods, split them open and drop the little black seeds into a pestle and mortar. Grind them to a fine powder.

Pour the cream into a heavy based pan, add the ground cardamom and bring to just below boiling point over a gentle heat. Take the cream off the heat and add the broken chocolate and the butter. Stir until everything is melted together and leave it to cool for about five minutes. Pour the chocolate cream into the pie case, put into the fridge and leave to set for a couple of hours.

Before serving lightly dust the top with some cocoa powder then serve with creme fraiche and perhaps a strong coffee.

This recipe is an adaptation of one from The flavour Thesaurus, a book I am currently reading with great pleasure.

Salted Pumpkin Seed Chocolates

Boo! 

It has been quite some time in the wilderness but I'm thinking it's time to resurrect Feast with Bron. I miss having a place to write about food adventures and keep track of new favourites and the occasional disaster. The plan is to blog from a broader base than just Borough and market days but still go with the pleasures of eating. My heart and soul is firmly rooted in the buying, making and eating of great food. I'm a greedy cow at heart - but always that's happy to share.

Ages ago I bought the Polpo cookbook and an early favourite was roasted butternut, served just warm, draped with torn proscuitto then sprinkled with a grating of salted ricotta and a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds. All the elements were individually good, together making a lovely plate of food but easily the most amazing element was the lightly toasted seeds. They taste amazing - rich and smooth and deeply savoury like a quick crunch of luxury scattered across the plate.

And so easy! Small dry pan, gentle heat, add seeds and toss occasionally for a couple of minutes till they go from green to brown and the first one or two pop and you're done.

I started adding them to other salads for a hint of richness and crunch, then as a textured finish to creamy soups and a slightly decadent tasting addition to soft pasta sauces. They were so good in every incarnation - like a little miracle flavour bomb every time. Always savoury though, their place was firmly rooted in salads and mains, pretty much where I use pumpkin flesh.

Around Halloween I came across the idea of using them in butter chocolates and I was intrigued. Very easy to see how the rich smoothness of the seeds would be enhanced to eleven blended with butter and wrapped in chocolate. I played with the recipe a bit and have found my perfect version.

Salted Pumpkin Seed Chocolates

These are a little bit fiddly but very easy and will make a fabulous addition to Christmas excess or pretty gifting to those you really do love

Makes 24

100g pumpkin seeds

40g unsalted butter

40g icing sugar

½ - 1 teaspoon sea salt crystals

350g dark chocolate

In a small frying pan dry fry the seeds over a medium heat until they are golden and smell rich and toasty. Allow to cool, then set aside a tablespoon of seeds for later.

Tip the rest of the seeds into a bowl with the butter and sugar and grind with a stick blender till you have a smooth paste. Stir through the salt crystals.

Set 24 small paper cases onto a baking tray.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the base of the bowl stays clear of the water. Spoon 2 teaspoons of the liquid chocolate into the base of each paper case then refrigerate for 15 minutes or so until the chocolate sets. 

Leave the remaining chocolate in the bowl over the pan of hot water so it stays liquid,

Once the chocolate has set put a spoonful of the pumpkin seed paste on top and smooth it to almost the edge of the set chocolate.  Spoon another 2 teaspoons of chocolate over the top and add a couple of the reserved seeds to decorate. Put the tray of finished chocolate cups back into the fridge to set.

Share cautiously, eat with gusto!

Rhubarb & Ginger Cake

The vegetable that everyone loves to use as a fruit, rhubarb is simply wonderful. Special whenever it's about it's a real treasure now during this bleak end of February. Deep into the 'hungry gap' - named for the lack of fresh new produce yet to mature whilst the last of the winter crops and storage of root veg and brassica's is running out - the prospect of another week of turnip mash or leek soup, boiled carrots and roasted beetroots to finish the month is less than delightful. I love these veg - along with parsnips and swede, celeriac and cabbage, mushrooms and kale - but it's been the backbone of the veg bag for months. Into the midst of the gloom early forced rhubarb appears at the market, the slender pink stalks a harbinger of spring and the very definition of joy.

Rhubarb grew first in Asia, the cold climes of Mongolia and Siberia were ideal. It was traded along the Silk Road into China and was taken into Italy sometime around the 16th century, from where it arrived in England in the early 1600's. Initially it was mostly medicinal - some strains are useful in the treatment of lung and liver ailments but it seems the wrong strain was introduced to England so cultivation as a source of drugs failed to thrive. Then in 1817 there happened one of those freak accidents that changed the fortunes of rhubarb completely. A gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden unwittingly covered the rhubarb in soil during the winter and later, when the dirt was cleared, rather than finding all the plants to be dead there were tender shoots that were far superior in flavour to the outdoor variety. So the idea of 'forcing' was born. Commercial growers in London began deliberately covering the plants with soil or manure in order to produce the blanched stems, some going further by lifting the roots and moving them inside heated sheds to simulate the arrival of spring.

In the 1870's forced rhubarb began to be grown in Yorkshire - the area now so famous for it that in 2010 it was awarded the Protected Designation of Origin by the European Commission. In perhaps the second lucky accident for forcing, the frost pocket holding Leeds, Wakefield and Morley combined with local conditions proved to be ideal. Sheds were specially constructed for the first time, the local heavy clay soil was particularly well suited, cheap coal from the local mines made heating the forcing sheds viable, there was plenty of horse manure and 'shoddy' - a by product of the local wool industry - was a perfect mulch for the young crowns. Warmth and moisture tricked the young plants into thinking it's spring, and so it grew its lovely bright pink stems; apparently you can hear the rhubarb crackle as it grows, something I would love to witness. Picking was done by hand in candlelight, pretty much the method still used today.

So much rhubarb was produced each day and sent to market that the Great Northern Railway Company ran a special train - the Rhubarb Special! It ran nightly from just before Christmas till Easter to transport the crop to London Spitalfields and Covent Garden Markets, at its peak taking 200 tonnes of rhubarb a day. Imagine that.

It's a much smaller industry now but the forced rhubarb grown in Yorkshire is still very special indeed, its elegant sourness a lovely match for the delicate pink of the stalks. The care that goes into its production is well rewarded by showcasing the stalks. Rather than simply stewing them down to make crumble - my favourite way of using the later outdoor varieties - I really wanted to make cake. This recipe comes slightly adapted from Band of Bakers. The rhubarb is a perfect match with stem ginger, for both its sweetness and the tiny prickle of heat.

Rhubarb and Ginger Cake

You really need to use forced rhubarb for this cake, as the outdoor grown stuff would be too bitter

140g unsalted butter
200g soft light brown sugar
200g wholegrain spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs, whisked in a small bowl
5 pieces stem ginger in syrup, chopped fine, plus 2 tablespoons of syrup from the jar
Rhubarb stems, bright as you like, cut into 19cm lengths to fit the cake tin
Caster sugar for dredging

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F/gas 4. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin, I used a loose bottomed one for ease of turning out.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat, then stir in the brown sugar till fully combined, this takes a few minutes until the sugar melts properly into the hot butter. Leave to cool for a few minutes.

Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir into the butter and sugar mixture, along with the eggs and chopped ginger, until well combined. Scrape the batter into the prepared cake tin and level it off with the edge of spatula.

Lay the rhubarb stems onto the top of the cake - try to squeeze in as many as possible as they shrink a bit during baking. Bake in the centre of the oven for around 45 minutes until the cake has risen and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven brush the top with generous amounts of ginger syrup from the stem ginger jar and dredge with caster sugar. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for about 20 minutes then turn it out onto a wire rack, rhubarb side up.

Serve warm with thick cream or ice cream as a dessert or else cold, sliced generously for afternoon tea.

Guaranteed to brighten your week.

Tomato Jam

Yes really, jam! They are a fruit, really, though most often used in a savoury fashion that it's easy to forget they may have other possibilities. I love them raw and cooked at this time of year, and the lovely summer we're (still?) having has produced a juicy well flavoured crop, piled in abundance in all the shops and street markets round me. I had a few too many last week so made a big pot of this lovely jam, originally from a recipe by Jose Pizarro. I made and bottled a couple of kilos but you can make a small quantity for a single jar - which I did last year - and it still tastes just great. It's a bit like a marmalade rather than a very sweet jam.

Tomato Jam

Makes approximately 300ml

1kg ripe, well flavoured tomatoes
125g caster sugar
125g demerara sugar
1 small cinnamon stick
peel of 1/2 lemon
peel of 1/2 orange - tie the two lots of peel together with string to make it easy to remove

Use a sharp knife to make a cross in the skin on the base of each tomato.

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, add the tomatoes and simmer for 3 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the tomatoes from the pan and plunge them into iced water. Remove the stems and the skins - they will slip off really easily. Chop the tomatoes into 4 or 5 rough slices, making sure to catch the juice as you do.

Place the tomatoes and juice in a  saucepan and leave to reduce over a low heat for 20 - 30 minutes till most of the water has evaporated. Now add the sugars, cinnamon and peels and give everything a good stir. Don't break up the cinnamon.

Slowly cook the tomatoes for at about an hour - longer if you're making a bigger batch - stirring regularly. The end result should be a sticky, firm jam that is a shiny brown red colour.

When cooked remove the cinnamon stick and the citrus peel and pour into a warm sterilised jar.

Keeps well in the fridge.

This is gorgeous slathered on hot toast for breakfast, as a side with cheeses or cold roast pork or ham. And on twitter Joanne from joanne-eatswellwithothers.com suggested having with grilled cheese on toast - definitely on my list of weekend treats to try.

Little Carrot Pots

The thing about getting a weekly veg bag that is preselected by someone else is that it becomes an ever evolving challenge. To use it all in the allotted time, to make great food - new and interesting dishes with the contents as your starting point and defining guide - avoid disasters, don't let it spoil or go to waste, eat less meat all seem to be considerations. A weekly Ready Steady Cook challenge at home. It's harder than it should be!

This week I had carrots and no plan for most of them. Love carrots - all alone they can brighten your day - they taste great, have a brilliant crunch, are lovely raw, grated, juiced, steamed, mashed, useful in all kinds of stews and salads the whole year long. If they don't come from the supermarket they have the potential to be comedy shapes or the starting point of many a joke. Good for you - the World Carrot Museum summarises neatly -   

 
Let us start with a brief history of Medicine and Nutrition - 

Patient "I am sick".

Physicians responses:
3500 years ago - "Here eat this root"
2500 year ago - "That root is heathen - say this prayer"
150 years ago - "That is superstition - drink this potion"
50 years ago - "That potion is snake oil - take this pill"
15 years ago - "That pill is no good, take this antibiotic"
Today - "that is not natures way - here eat this root" 

 The recipe I settled on this week had piqued my curiosity in the weekend Guardian. It was for a dessert, a concoction of carrot  and cream, gorgeously scented with vanilla and orange then served with more cream in little pots. The man loves little pots! It comes from Thomasina Miers' article about pigs - and her pig idea project.

Carrot and Vanilla Pots

Makes 4

Use the best flavoured carrots you can get your hands on - I find if they smell sweetly carroty they taste pretty good

200g carrots, peeled and finely sliced
15g butter
40g golden caster sugar
Juice and zest of an orange (a blood orange, ideally)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 vanilla pod
175ml double cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk

Heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Put the carrots in a saucepan with the butter, a tablespoon of sugar and the orange zest, and add water to cover. Cover and cook on a low heat for 15 minutes. Remove the lid, raise the heat and cook until all liquid boils off – the carrots should be tender and glazed. Add the orange juice and vanilla extract, and whizz to a fine purée with a stick blender.

Cut the vanilla pod in half and scrape out the seeds into a clean pan. Add the cream, scraped pod and remaining sugar, bring to just below a boil, remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly, retrieve the vanilla pod then pour the warm cream into the carrot purée. Add the whole egg and egg yolk, and whizz with the blender.

Fill four ramekins with the mix. Place the ramekins in a baking tray and pour in enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until just set. Remove, set aside to cool and serve at room temperature with cold pouring cream.

 They worked a treat, very simple to do, and I'm thinking they'd be fabulous with a blow torched sugar crust - though that might be because I am hankering for a kitchen blow torch.

Halloween Chocolate & Prune Cake

I am fat fingered, cack handed, inept - useless basically - when it comes to doing fiddly things. Paint skirting boards? More on floor, walls and me than ever goes onto those strips of wood. Pretty cards with sprinkles, glitter and sticky on hearts and flowers? Fingers stuck together, glittery face, smudged card. Sew on a button? I once sewed a button onto the waistband of a pair of trousers, having lined it up with the hole - who says I never learn - and finished it without a single knot or tangle in the sewing thread. Can't tell you how thrilled I was till I tried them on and found the button was on the wrong side of the fabric.

So I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why I decided this week to decorate a cake.

I had some Agen prunes that I wanted to use, having opened the pack last week. I fancied cake and wanted chocolate, hoping for something dark and unctuous. I searched the internet for inspiration and was astounded how little there is to do with prunes. They have so little *love* that even the California Prunes site calls them ugly and acknowledges they're the butt of  many many jokes. Really guys? That is one odd marketing pitch. They are lovely things, richly flavoured, great texture, perfect amount of chewy, and they soak up liquids to replump into glorious fruit any time of  year. When I was a kid my mother made dessert pretty much every day and a regular one (snicker) was prunes soaked in cold tea and brown sugar overnight then served with cream or custard next evening that I just loved. A good starting point, I decided and set about adapting a couple of recipes I found till I arrived at this fab mousse like, brownie like, chocolate delight.

It's nearly Halloween, an event it's impossible to ignore these days with lots of creepy crawlies and fake spiders and ghoulies and goodness knows what adorning pretty much everything, and I suddenly thought I want to make it a creepy cake.So off I went  to buy black food colouring and something that could be legs or fangs or hairy appendages and came home with ready to roll black icing and a packet of Oreos. I was thinking I could crush the Oreos to make  a dirt topping then decided I didn't like the flavour of them enough to ruin my cake. I started to roll out long strips of icing - a fabulously messy process especially if you're me - and realised I could make worms to look like they were emerging from the holes I'd make testing the doneness of the cake. Deciding it looked brilliant - very life like - I made little bugs, like scarab beetles, cutting patterns into their backs with the blunt end of a butter knife. By this point my palms are black and sticky from rolling icing, the knife is black and sticky too and there's bits of discarded icing on the bench and stuck to the outside of my left elbow.

Has to be said I was having a lot of fun, really enjoying the way my 'design' was evolving. I had been thinking of making spiders entirely from icing but, in a flash of inspiration, remembered a half jar of rum soaked prunes in the cupboard from quite some time ago. Pure alcohol, basically. I melted a bit more dark chocolate and, using a couple of toothpicks, rolled my boozy prunes in it till they were well coated. I put a little pile of  popping candy (Waitrose sell it, Heston makes it) onto a sheet of baking parchment alongside another pile of those tiny coloured sticks and rolled my prunes around using increasingly encrusted toothpicks and sticky fingers everything - and I mean everything - was pretty much covered. Decidedly cack handed by now, I cut out some very unconvincing legs from a bit more of the icing and added them and some 'feelers' to my bugs. Didn't have enough legs so you'll have to believe there was some kind of terrible industrial accident in creepy crawly land and these were the lucky survivors. Dropped them onto the cake and - voila!

Be afraid....

Prune & Chocolate Cake

If the cake is to be eaten only by the grown ups, you can always soak the prunes in 5 tablespoons of rum or brandy rather than tea and sugar for an afternoon tea treat.

175g pitted prunes
1 tea bag
1 tablespoon brown sugar
100g butter, diced
150g dark chocolate
50g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
4 eggs, 2 separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
100g ground almonds
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
50g soft black icing
50g dark chocolate, extra
2 tablespoons brown and coloured edible popping candy

Put the prunes into a heatproof bowl with the teabag and the tablespoon of brown sugar and cover with boiling water. Leave to soak for a couple of hours or overnight then drain away any remaining liquid, set 3 whole prunes to one side, and then roughly chop the rest using a stick blender.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line the base of a 23cm springform pan with baking parchment and grease the sides with butter. Break the chocolate into large chunks and put it into a heatproof bowl with the diced butter and heat over a pan of just simmering water. When it’s all melted take off the heat and add the chopped prunes.

In a separate bowl beat the 2 sugars with 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks for about 5 minutes till the mixture is pale and doubled in volume. Fold in the chocolate prune mixture and then add the combined ground almonds, plain flour and cocoa and fold in gently till just mixed.

Whisk the remaining 2 egg whites till stiff and lightly fold those through the cake mixture. Pour it into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes till the cake is just set. Leave it in the tin on a cooling rack till cold.

Decorate as described above, or simply eat unadorned, it's still fabulous.

 Eat more prunes.