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.

Taboon - one kind of flat bread

Have just been in Oz visiting family with the bonus of basking in a little sunshine in the midst of this bleak winter. My parents live in relaxed beachside suburbia on the coast south of Sydney close enough to the surf to hear the waves pounding sand and high enough up to whale watch from the kitchen window whenever the pods migrate. To add to the idyl they are both keen and experienced gardeners and despite (because of?) the salt air they have a beautiful collection of many hued roses at the front and a most magnificent herb garden in a raised bed at the back. As someone who can kill rosemary just by looking at it, I am seriously jealous.

My mother recently planted out half a dozen aubergine seedlings - needless to say they all grow strong and healthy and within a few weeks have set dozens of flowers and the first beautiful glossy fruit is ready. Realising she is about to have a potential glut of what she calls eggplants she requested a sharing of all interesting recipes, whatever the source. Serendipity perhaps but the weekend of my return The Guardian Joudie Kalla's Cook Residency was the story of  rummaniyeh,* a Palestinian dish for aubergine and pomegranate. It earned me double brownie points when I passed it on, having convinced my mother to buy some pomegranate molasses without offering a lot of ideas to use it.

I loved the idea of silky peeled cubes of aubergine melting into the lentil stew, spiked with the visual beauty and sour surprise of pomegranate. The dish tasted as good as it read. I was intrigued to try taboon, too, as the ubiquity of flat breads in the Middle East convinced me they would bring something to the overall dish. I searched about for a recipe and came up with this. I will be honest - I was absolutely seduced by the idea of making my own teeny tiny taboon - the stone ovens traditionally used to cook this bread - I have a garden covered in pebbles.

Taboon - a Palestinian flat bread

1 teaspoon sugar
150ml warm water
15g dried active yeast
250g strong plain white flour
75g strong plain wholemeal wheat flour
Big pinch salt

Dissolve the sugar in the warm water then add the yeast, stir briefly and leave for about five minutes till it starts to foam.

Mix the flours and salt in a large bowl, make a well in the centre and add the yeast liquid. Stir to bring it together, adding a little more warm water if needed to make a pliable dough. Knead the dough on a lightly floured bench for about ten minutes till it is smooth and elastic.

Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth and leave somewhere warm for about an hour till the dough has doubled in size. Punch it down, split the dough into four and knead each piece for another minute.

If you want to go the taboon route, heat your oven to its hottest setting. Cover a flat baking tray with pebbles - I washed mine in boiling water first to rid them of their 'gardenness' - and put them into the oven while it heats.

Just with your fingers pull each ball of dough out into a vague approximation of a circle, fairly thin but not too much, you want to end up with nice chewy bread rather than pita style puffs. Put 2 circles of dough straight onto the tray of stones and return to the very hot oven. 

They will cook in a couple of minutes, puffing slightly, picking up a bit of colour. Take the cooked breads out and add the next two. Repeat the process. 

Voila! Done.

The bread was great - the little bit of wholemeal flour added a lovely texture and chewiness. We ate a couple with dinner with the rest in the freezer. They will be perfect with big bowls of soup in the not too distant future.

* A note about the lentil and aubergine recipe - the quantities for the pomegranate molasses are seriously out - there's far too much. I added less than half the 150ml and it made the lentils decidedly sour. A quick google reveals that the 150ml should be pomegranate juice or substitute 2 tablespoons of molasses and the juice of 2 lemons, which I think will make a much better dish.

Soda Bread

I made a loaf of soda bread last week, a little uncertain to start with but thrilled to bits with it by the end. I buy a loaf occasionally from Elliots at Borough, but they only make it Saturdays. I have been known to decide I need it beyond all others and set off early with no other thing on the list and return home 90 minutes later, triumphant. Turns out I could have made my own, not just cheaper but faster. It's the faster bit that sticks in my craw. What cheers me up is that it is as good as the one I buy.

Inspiraton for it came from the perfect series in the Guardian, it did indeed sound simple and I needed a little something to go with big bowls of leek and potato soup. The simplicity comes from using  bicarbonate of soda as the raising agent rather than yeast and then having no need to knead or prove. Mix a few bits together, whap it on a baking tray in a vague bread shape, oven for 50 minutes - and you have a proper, picture book style loaf. Apart from yoghurt or buttermilk I had all the ingredients - and they sell yoghurt at the Londis on the corner. In fact they sell pretty much everything in some form or other at the Londis on the corner, though if I go in to buy beer in the evening and the man has been in ahead of me to buy beer then they refuse to let me make my purchase. Delights me every time.

 
Soda Bread

Don't be tempted to omit the treacle, it adds a complex depth of flavour rather than sweetness

450g coarse wholemeal flour
50g rolled oats
1 teaspoon salt
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon treacle 
1 tablespoon honey
200g tub of whole milk yoghurt made up to 450ml with milk - or 450ml buttermilk
1 tablespoon melted butter, to finish

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas 6 and grease a baking sheet.

Put all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and whisk together to combine. Stir the treacle and honey - they might need warming slightly to make them runny - into the yoghurt or buttermilk and mix well until combined.

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the yoghurt liquid. Use your hands to very quickly combine everything and you have a soft sticky dough. Plop it onto the baking sheet and pat it into a round shape then cut a deep cross into the top of the dough. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, keeping an eye on it, until the crust is golden and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath.

Brush with the melted butter to ensure the bread remains moist and doesn't form too hard a crust. Allow to cool before slicing.

I had thought it would only be good fresh on the day but it made great toast for the next couple of days for  breakfast spread liberally with lots of butter and marmalade and a perfect base tucked under a supper of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.

I wanted ...I bought... I made

The only baking this week was my very first loaf of soda bread

Friday night we are out for birthday drinks and some fun. Went to Androuet in Spitalfields and it was very good indeed.

Saturday I think we might have takeaway Chinese for lunch for whatever reason! Decadently had another sit down meal - dim sum at Bright Courtyard after a decidedly unsuccessful attempt to buy a new duvet cover. I washed a pink shirt with the old - formerly white - duvet. Lunch was most fine, I had read about the restaurant in an article by Fuchsia Dunlop. Delighted to find a new place I'd never come across before, though Baker Street is not really a regular haunt.

Saturday night grilled pork chops - from the freezer - and lots of veg from the organics stall at Oval Market.

Sunday lunch at the Canton, gloriously fabulous porcetta in such enormous slices that we took the last of it home, though the man still managed a little cream topped chocolate pot. Mad a spinach pie for the evening - tentatively freezer related as I have some filo needs using. Bought more filo as well as spinach and spring onions in Brixton, feta and eggs from Borough, and a Spanish tomme from the new Lidl that's opened round the corner, which worked really well.

The spinach pie was a very fine dinner Sunday night but also great cold in lunchboxes with roasted peppers and fresh cucmber and lasted till Thursday quite happily.

Monday King Lear, started early so I made some roasted onions and peppers for serious sandwiches with the leftover porchetta and some fresh rocket. Felt underwhelmed by the production after expecting great things, didn't quite work.

Tuesday beef pot roast and mash - chinese takeaway and some good Cote du Rhone.

Wednesday I'm out so the man shall have a treat - was cancelled so we had salade nicoise by request of the man - bought lettuce in Brixton but otherwise had everything in, even some crusty bread in the freezer.

Thursday - soup and cheesy buns - actually soda bread that I made after being inspired by this week's perfect. Used yoghurt from the corner shop, not buttermilk as I couldn't find it anywhere. The rest of the stuff I had in the cupboard.

At the market I also bought coffee - sad to hear they currently have no Indonesian which I've been loving for the past few months - £13 for Costa Rican beans instead, bought Artisan chocolates for the lovely sister in law - £6,  eggs and one pork chop from Ginger Pig - £10 even, milk and half a St John fruit loaf from Neals Yard - they now stock very little St John bread so it was a real treat to snaffle even half a loaf for weekend breakfasts - £4.15. Also bought lots of veg from Brixton for the insatiable beast of a vegetable juicer - another £7 (approximate)

This Week I Wanted, I Bought, I Made

Feel I did okay on the starting to use stuff whilst actually still having some new and interesting food last week, though many things didn't quite materialise. Undeterred I have a plan for the week, actually using some of the leftover plan from last week!

Friday night I think cold collation with little olive choux buns. Ha! How about cold collation with fresh crusty bread from the market? Was good but the bread was much better as toast next morning.

Saturday the man is working so will continue the freezer theme and have pheasant braised with celery and mash for a tasty end to his day. Really good dinner, the pheasant sauce is finished with cream - from the freezer - and egg yolk for a sumptuous sauce. 

Potatoes are heritage ones from Oval market, and purply blue all the way through. Looked *interesting* tasted great. Sunday I really fancy lasagne - I have a tub of white sauce, a block of Pecorino and some beef mince in the freezer and tomatoes and pasta in the cupboard. Served with a big green salad, think it will be lovely for lunches too.

Thoroughly yum.

Monday I fancy soup, probably broccoli and sesame which I've been wondering about for a little while. This is where it started to fall apart - managed to develop a full on head cold that somehow is not going anywhere. So, luckily, there was lasagne already made, and a fine tea it was.




Tuesday omelette and salad, went for the blackeye bean salsa - so glad I did, it was really good - with roasted onion and green bean salad and some tasty Ginger Pig sausages.

Wednesday I'll use the tub of spiced lamb stock from the freezer to make curry with rice and spinach raita. Met up with the lovely niece of the man for a fine dinner at A Wong - go there if you can. Thursday I'm out so the man can have more curry, it's a good one to eat again. Still feeling bleeeuuugh! so soup it is, rocket and potato from a lovely recipe by Anna del Conte.

Went to Borough with a reasonably short list of things to buy. Only needed eggs from Ginger Pig, at £1.50 it's the least I have ever spent there! Milk @ £1.55 from Neals Yard, another lowest spend I think. Gastronomica has reorganised the layout - sort of easier to find lovely things - so bought Napoli salami and it was simply wonderful, when the man and I first met we used to have Napoli sandwiches on Saturday for lunch and the first mouthful reminded me so much of that happy time. Also bought some coppa, and a big slice of a cow/goat/sheep milk mix from a large round, made by the same producers who make the gorgeous rocchetta and La Tur. Cost £13 all together. Then to find bread - there is a newish baker that is actually based in the market and they sell from a stall Thursday - Saturday. Bought a big white tin loaf that was slightly disappointing fresh but seriously good toasted. £3, not a bad price. Went to the parma ham and mozzarella shop and they now sell a couple of other hams as well so had 100g of a cooked ham with fresh herbs, lovely in a sandwich for lunch £4. Finished the shop with rocket, sugarsnaps and celery from the fruit stall at the front that is neither Chegworths or Ted's Veg but is very good, and supplied by Tony Booth, a recommendation, surely. Was £3 though wish it was more versatile.

Great packaging, no?

Through the week bought more milk and needed onions and garlic, sausages for Tuesday night, green beans and veg to juice.

The ultimate sausage sandwich

This week, anyway....

Early in the week, I bought a pound (money) scoop of peppers at Nour Cash & Carry in Brixton, but they were not as crunchy as I'd hoped when I got home. So cubed them and tossed them onto a flat roasting tray with some basil oil, a roughly chopped onion and a couple of flattened garlic cloves. Roasted them at 180C for about 30 minutes and they were transformed into a richly frangrant, brightly coloured tangle. Better even than I was hoping for, and good to eat with a tuna salad.

Next night we were off to Oval House, a tiny theatre local to home, so I wanted a quick and easy bite before we set out. Toyed with collation - the man does love a cold collation - but it didn't inspire. Thinking round it I decided the best use of the leftover silky peppers was with an Italian classic that I have loved since I first ate one a gazillion years ago - fennel sausage.

I've bought them all round London from different Italian delis, almost all of them stock them in some form or another, they're like a fresh version of fennel salami. Lina Stores in Soho has been making their own for decades and they are some of the finest I have ever come across. Quick bus journey and they were mine.

 While they cooked in a little pan, hissing and spiiting like a cornered cat, I buttered some crusty bloomer fresh from Di Lieto and split the rest of the peppers bewteen two plates. Handful each of greens

top it with a hot sausage and

there's a quick dinner fit for the man. And me.

I do love a good sandwich.

Pan Boxtie

Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
If you can’t make boxty,
You’ll never get a man.

Squeeze your grated potato dry in a clean cloth

It was St Patrick's Day last week - but you knew that, didn't you? Patrick, a man sainted for ridding Ireland of snakes. I was a (possibly impressionable) Australian schoolgirl when I learned that fact and I was blown away with admiration for a man who could rid a whole country of snakes. Australia after all has 140 varieties, 100 of which are poisonous though only 12 of them are likely to inflict a wound that would kill you. Wow!  I thought. Respect.

It is undoubtedly a reason to celebrate Irish food, and the more of it I sample the more I think, Wow! I had some fine smoked salmon from Burren, an award winning Irish smokehouse and fancied trying something new to go with it.

During the Famine of the 1800's in Ireland people lived pretty much on potatoes and buttermilk, and interesting ways with potatoes became a necessity. Boxty was one result, a poorhouse bread. I found this version made by Darina Allen, and fell in love with the simplicity of the language and the method. Her recipe comes from Granny Toye and you can almost hear the passing on of skill from one generation to the next.

Crisp and golden boxty

Pan Boxty

Good hot, warm or cold you could add a few chopped herbs for an untraditional variation

Serves 4

6 medium potatoes
a handful of white flour
salt
butter, for frying

Scrub the potatoes well, but don't peel. Line a bowl with a cloth. Grate the potatoes into the cloth, then squeeze out the liquid into the bowl and allow it to sit for about 20 minutes until the starch settles. Set the potatoes aside.

Drain off the water and leave the starch in the bottom of the bowl. Add the grated
potato, a handful of white flour and some salt.

Melt a nice bit of butter on a heavy iron pan and pour in the potato mixture. It should be 2–2.5cm (¾–1in) thick. Cook on a medium heat. Let it brown nicely on one side before turning over and then on the other side, about 30 minutes in all, depending on the heat.

It's much better to cook it too slowly rather than too fast. It should be crisp and golden on the outside. Cut the boxty into four farls and serve.

This made a gorgeous supper Sunday night with the smoked salmon, a handful of watercress and a generous dollop of sour cream.

We had the leftover boxty next morning with a fried egg for a fairly lush brunch!

My Spring Picnic

Snow Edgware Road this week

I do love a challenge occasionally, keeps the mind attuned and the reflexes sharp. So when I got an email from Sopexa Marketing asking if I'd like to participate in a blogger challenge organised by BIVB to match Chablis with take away food I thought hmmm, could be interesting.

I pondered the characteristics of Chablis - it's steely minerality, the lack of oak making it elegantly bone dry rather than luscious, a wonderfully austere wine for our time of austerity. Made entirely of Chardonnay grapes it is grown in vineyards in the northern part of Burgundy in limestone soil formed in the Jurassic era from the fossils of small oysters. As Andrew Jefford says in The New France: "It smells of smoke and stone and winter air; it tastes as quick and fresh as a chill, pebbly stream tumbling off a dark, rain-draped mountain. Do you doubt the influence of soil on wine flavour? If you do, buy yourself a bottle of chablis."

So far so fabulous. But taking the specific brief to match to takeaway things suddenly got a little more challenging. My undoubted favourite takeaway place is Green Valley, just off the Edgware Road, a positive cornucopia of all food Middle Eastern. I worked nearby for a while, and on occasional sunny Fridays the office would decamp to Hyde Park for wonderfully decadent picnics. We'd buy takeaway tubs of hummus and tabouli, smoky aubergine moutabal, olives, warm falafel, shards of spicy lamb shawarma and plenty of flat bread. It was the first time I ate heart of palm and it was here I discovered mujadarrah - the surprisingly delicate combination of lentils, rice and fried onions. There would be wine, too, not vast amounts but a glass to enjoy as we ate and chatted. I could see how a chablis might work well with this kind of food, its warm spicing working well with the minerality of the wine. Not the lamb perhaps, but the falafels and salads seemed like a possible.

Though we are but a week from spring, the weather is far too poor to be conducive to being outside. The idea of a picnic was simply wrong - rain, cold, snow, wind, no, thrice definitely no. And yet the idea niggled at me as things went from bad to worse... somehow, I thought, I might have a picnic, surely I could have a picnic, really I must have a picnic....

Dammit I will have a picnic! I dug out the picnic rug and set off for Green Valley.

Green Valley's shop window - how seductive is that?!

Nuts and Dates, take as much as you need

This is undoubtedly one of the great food shops of London. They have a large butcher's counter, a bakery for flat breads, an enormous rotisserie cooking dozens of chickens and two slowly rotating swords - one of spiced lamb shawarma and one of chicken. They sell a vast array of wonderful ingredients and you are free to buy as much or as little as you need.

What an array!

 And then, at the back of the shop, there is this extraordinary salad counter, literally piled high with wonderful fresh food, dozens of trays of beautifully made offerings. They sell the lot by the end of each day, tomorrow will always have a new selection.

How to choose?

 I resisted the temptation to buy some of everything - but only just! I decided a vegetarian feast was needed - gorgeous crispy falafel, aubergine dip, tahini sauce, vibrantly fresh herb tabbouli to match the zing of the wine. A pile of bread of course and olives, hummus too. And baklava too, to finish, it's gorgeous nutty syrup crispness simply irresistible.

Still pretty bleak at Hyde Park Corner

 Perhaps spring was watching, as the sun did come out briefly, but not with any warmth.

Picnic!

Chablis - it was a great accompaniment

 What a lovely spread we had, who could ask for anything more?

The makings of a fine falafel roll

Dinner - with Masterchef on the tele!

 It has to be said the man was a little surprised to find dinner served on a rug but with the heating on and the curtains closed it might have been spring outside!

Nice Pick For A Picnic!

 The Chablis worked very well with the spread of food, we particlarly enjoyed the zing it brought to the party.

Here's hoping spring arrives here soon...

In the meantime you can find Green Valley just off the Edgware Road at 36-37 Upper Berkeley St  Marylebone, London W1H 5QF

You can find Chablis at all good wine merchants.