Seville Orange Marmalade

There are some terribly important rules to follow when making marmalade.  Here they are;

1. Do exactly as Delia instructs. 

Once you have made Delia's marmalades for a couple of seasons, you will then be in a position to use your own experience and then and only then are you allowed to make the following deviations from Delia's instructions;

2. Do not use pectin enriched sugar; complete waste of money. Your citrus is full of pectin, and if you have used frozen citrus, simply add the juice from an extra lemon.

3. Refuse to engage with the mind-numbingly tedium that is cutting off the citrus' pith. Pith removal must be abandoned, especially when making grapefruit marmalades.  Pith will all boil to nothing and release so much pectin you won't need the pectin sugar.
4. Pomelo or ugli fruit never set and produce a bland, flavourless mess.  What a waste of your life, especially if you stripped then shredded all that pith...

5. Just tie up the pips in the bit of muslin.

6. Boil the marmalade for 15 minutes only, do the frozen saucer test then turn off the marmalade pan and let it all settle.  Your marmalade will be softly set, especially if you've thrown in an extra lemon just for badness' sake.  There are few things as repellent at breakfast time as a boiled to buggery, firm-set marmalade, although runny boiled egg white comes a close second.  Makes me want to boke just thinking of that...

7. Replace a litre of water with a litre carton of clementine juice in your orange shred marmalade.  Also, consider adding a carton of mohito cocktail mix to your lime shred marmalade.  Oh yes.

Vera Atkins Memorial Seat Dedication Saturday 24 September 2011

I always like to be home from France by mid-August, because I need to be in sunny Derbyshire for the start of the drupe harvest.  Buckets and buckets of Warwickshire Drooper plums together with six varieties of apple (ok, so I like apples) and a sack of onions from the Asian food stores in Hyson Green were transformed as if by magic into a year's worth of Delia's finest spiced plum chutney.  Recipe and pictures here.  My jollies in France this summer meant I missed the tayberries.  I'd netted them off at the end of May, of course, but as I just threw the damned netting over the canes in a rather hurried fashion, it really wasn't surprising that I returned to a smug resident blackbird population and ZERO fruit.  I didn't make the same mistake with my mulberries, and when they started ripening during September on went the netting and off kept the blackbirds.

And then August filled up with weddings; two each week until last week.  Beautiful churches, handsome grooms, delightful brides; chinking flutes and everywhere women guests in fabulous hats and too much gossip.  Pane, amore e chi chi chi.  This week I went to my first funeral of the year.  On and on the year turns.  Tomorrow I'm off to the National Arboretum in Staffordshire.  

http://www.thenma.org.uk/index.aspx

At 12.30pm the Allied Special Forces Association will dedicate the Vera Atkins memorial seat remembering the women of the Special Operations Executive who lost their lives during WWII.  They really did give their tomorrows for my today, and my love affair with France.    

"Vera May Atkins was the Intelligence Officer- French Section of the SOE, formed on 22 July 1940 to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement.  SOE's mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines and to serve as the core of the Auxiliary Units, a British resistance movement. 

"As an exile from Romania Vera came to Britain before the start of the Second World War. She joined S.O.E and was soon managing most of the men and women agents who were being sent into France to carry out clandestine work behind enemy lines. This memorial seat is a tribute to her courage and that of her women agents who lost their lives. Her dedication and resolve to go into Europe and find out what had happened to them after the war ended was not well recognised, except by the families of those lost. The tree at the centre of the memorial seat was grown from a seed found in a Fir cone picked up in 2005 from inside the electric fence that bordered Natzweiler Concentration Camp, which is near the village of Moussey, in the Vosges mountains of eastern France.

"The Natzweiller Tree is also a special tribute to S.O.E. agents Andree Borrel, Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden and also to Sonia Olschanezky, who was a locally recruited member of Robin, a sub-circuit of the Prosper resistance network.

"After capture earlier in the year the four women were taken to Natzweiler Concentration Camp on the 6th July 1944 and executed by lethal injection and their bodies burnt in the camp crematorium that very evening. Three had landed in enemy territory to work as clandestine radio operators, couriers and resistance fighters to assist the French Resistance Forces. Eight other woman S.O.E. agents had also been captured and 4 executed at Dachau and 4 at Ravensbruck, including Lilian Rolfe, Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort and Violette Szabo.

Delia Smith's Spiced Plum or Damson Chutney

Halve and stone 3lb Warwickshire Drooper plums, damsons, or a mixture of your orchard drupes. Core and finely chop 1lb cooking apples, peel and finely chop 3 large onions, and drop into your preserving pan.

Crush 3 fat cloves of garlic, 2 heaped teaspoons ground ginger, 1lb raisins, 1lb soft brown sugar, 1lb demerara and add to the preserving pan together with 2 pints malt vinegar.

Next add 2 tablespoons salt, 2 small cinnamon sticks (I don't use sticks, as I can't be bothered to fish them out at the end, so just replace with 2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon), 1oz whole allspice berries and a dessertspoon of whole cloves. Delia advises wrapping the whole spices into a little square of muslin, but you too can just crush the whole spices in your mortar and pestle and throw into the pan.

Bring everything to the boil, lower heat to a simmer and cook gently for about 2-3 hours until all the vinegar has disappeared, the chutney has thickened and your house smells wonderful. Pour into sterilised jars in the usual way, then leave on your work surface for a few days, admiring your labour. Don't even try to eat until at least Christmas / three months - better the following year.

Thanks Delia.

Prunus Domestica "Warwickshire Drooper" and Delia's Spiced Plum Chutney

I picked the last of these rosy golden plums a couple of Fridays ago, then got up early on Saturday morning and made Delia's Spiced Plum Chutney, click here for the recipe. I usually make it every other autumn, as a pan full of chutney makes enough to keep me going for the next couple of years. It really tastes best when made with damsons. This season has been so wet, my usual damson supplier had barely enough drupes for my annual damson gin... no contest really...

Rising early, I took everything out onto the terrace and prepped it there. It's at times like this that I realise I lead the life of Riley.

Normandy: The Third Door Is The Door To The Dairy

"The third door is the door of the dairy.

Peace; silence; endless dripping of the wicker trays where the cheeses are set to shrink; curds, heaped and pressed in metal mould; on hot July days, the smell of curdled milk seemed cooler and sicklier - no, not sicklier, but mildly sour, so washed out that it could only be smelt at the very back of one's nose, where it was already more of a taste than a smell.

Churn, scoured to the utmost cleanliness. Little pots of butter lying on cabbage leaves. Red-handed dairy maid. Windows, always kept open, but stretched with wire gauze to keep out cats and flies.

The pans are ranged in rows, full with milk which gradually turns yellow until all the cream has risen. The cream rises to the surface slowly; it puffs and wrinkles and separates from the whey. When the whey has lost all its richness, it is time to skim."

André Gide: Fruits of the Earth

trans. Dorothy Bussy, Secker 1949

from "The Cooking of Normandy" Jane Grigson.

Well Wrapped Up For Late Winter Gardening

I seem to have spent an extraordinary amount of my time this week shovelling shit - or rather creating a deep bed in the peach house for this year's Mediterranean beauties, and manuring the beds ready for this year's pumpkins and sweetcorn. It's spent mushroom compost mixed with stable manure, so has the not unattractive smell of horses combined with the fungoid pong of dark sheds and rotting wood. Crumbly, black and slightly damp, its texture is perfect. It just falls off the trailer into a huge pile on one of the beds, and from there its barrowed to the peach house and then the three other beds. (The bed set aside for root crops wont be manured, as we want fat luscious roots not green leafy top growth.)

Winter gardening should be done in layers - a couple of cotton camisoles, short-sleeved v-neck tee shirt tucked into trousers to keep your kidneys warm, sleeveless body warmer zipped up to neck, slightly too large fleece (for easy of upper body movement) zipped up to neck, woollen hat, heavy duty navy trousers to resist thorns, wind and water, and finally thick cotton socks in my beloved safety boots. After a few barrow loads, we were stripping off the fleeces, then hats, then body warmers; and at -1C we were shovelling in tee shirts, moving fast and fluidly on warmed muscles and the beautiful repetitive movement of experienced gardeners. When the head gardener came for a chat, on went all the layers as we stood about chatting and drinking coffee. The shallots and garlic have arrived together with the seed potatoes, but the ground is still frozen so they will wait in the glass house for the thaw.

And some red shallots were pickled following Delia's simple instructions; peel carefully, and cover with salt and leave to drain for 24 hours. Then wipe dry, and pack into jars adding a teaspoon of whole mixed pickling spices, then cover with malt vinegar. Seal and leave for one month before eating, and eat within three months. Perfect with late spring ploughman's lunches.

And last night I celebrated the end of my week without merci beaucoup enfant deux, who's away with the school doing sixth-former things. A couple of lamb steaks fried off in the ridged pan until a bit charred on the outside and pink in the middle, then handfuls of the tiniest button mushrooms dropped into the pan and given a good old shake about. Lamb removed to warm plate and half a tub of creme fraiche and lots of salt and black pepper added to the mushrooms and shaken about again to mix into a coffee coloured sauce. Lamb removed to plate of butterhead lettuce leaves, and mushroom sauce poured over. Yum yum in my tum. And lovely emails. Does life get any better than this?

Medlars

http://www.historicfood.com/medlars%20page.htm

Medlars

Medlars are the strangest looking fruit. Stranger still the accepted manner of eating them on the verge of rotting. Yuk. I picked some handfuls yesterday, and having given them a good wash in cold water, left them overnight in the kitchen. Today I shall make medlar jelly, following the same basic steps as set out in posts earlier in the autumn.

Can I find a recipe? Consulting a glossy coffee table book on preserving (biltong anyone?) and Jeremy Round's The Independent Cook drew a blank. Even Mrs Beeton had nothing to say in her second edition All About Cookery. Hurray for Jane Grigson, in English Food. Perfect. If you need something reliable always turn to Jane Grigson, my favourite cook. Here is her recipe;

Quince, Medlar, Sorb or Crab Apple Jelly

Although quinces should be ripe, medlars and sorbs are best used before they get to the softened, bletted stage when they are pleseant to eat as a dessert fruit. Crab apples should be used when they are just ripe.

Cut up the fruit after washing it. Cover it with water, and continue as in the recipe above ( or the posts below.) Precious quinces can be eked out with a proportion of windfall apples - in very thin years I have used 1/2 lb of quinces to 1 1/2 lb of apples and the jelly has still been delicious. These jellies are not as tart (as the ones above) but they go well with pork. Medlar jelly is good with poultry or game.

So there you have it. Jane has spoken. Picture to follow.

Medlars and rosebuds, Autumn's last offerings

The back walls of the glasshouse were white washed whilst I was in Prague, and now look fresh, clean and wholesome. Already I'm imagining a row of big fat shiny blue Chinese pots, filled with the glossy leaves that seem to mark out citrus trees in the nursery. Frances Mayes writes about fabulous Scicilian lemons, the Meyer lemon? I need to reread.

I pick the last of the season's rosebuds, and stash them into my pocket. I shall make rose petal bathing salts, adding some lavender seed heads and leaf trimmings. One of the loveliest things about Prague was the swishy hotel, all glass doors, thick, heavy bed linen and a marble-rich bathroom complete with toiletries from the White Company. How cool is that? Well, not as cool as the range of bathing salts for sale in Prague's vast number of Manufaktura stores. Bath salts? Isn't that a bit "granny?"

Not after smelling this Dead Sea salt enriched with melissa and calendula flowers; cedar, ginger and oak bark; or simply lavender flowers. I couldn't choose between them, so bought all three. And having trolled all around Prague each day sightseeing, it was bliss to return to the hotel, drop some ice cubes into a tall glass and top up with something lovely from the guest's honesty bar (how cool is that!), run a bath and sprinkle in the bathing salts and just float away.

So here's my version of Prague's bathing salts;

Take a kilo bag of rock salt from the Camargue*, that you bought in Cora during the summer. Empty into a large ceramic mixing bowl and add the rose buds and rose petals from the garden, together with any late lavender flowers and a couple of good handfuls of lavender leaves snipped into shards. Mix and mix with your hands and gently decant into bowls or an old white ceramic salt pig. Arrange bowls on window ledges around the house, and place the salt pig on the bathroom shelf, easily reached after a day spent in safety boots. Lovely.

* Of course you don't have to use a particular type of sea salt, just one that you enjoyed buying and use about the kitchen. The coarser the better.

Autumn Harvest: Blackberry Jelly, Crabapple Jelly

Anne Scott-James is right about wanting a terrace life in August. One needs to gather one's strength for the great autumn harvest.

Blackberry Jelly

Pick as many beautifully ripe blackberries as you can. When you get back home, weigh them and for each kilo / 2lb add one lemon's juice and a roughly chopped apple, skin and core included. Tip into your preserving pan, or any heavy based pan, and add enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, then turn down heat and simmer for about half an hour until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Mash to extract as much juice as possible. Allow to cool slightly, then pass through a jelly bag, overnight if necessary. DO NOT mash the fruit once in the jelly bag, or you will force tiny bits of pulp through the jelly bag causing the jelly to cloud - we are aiming for a clear, jewel-bright jelly.

Measure the juice collected, and 750g sugar to each 1l - 1lb sugar to each 1 pint for those of us working to old money. Return to the pan over a low heat and gently stir to dissolve sugar. Bring to a rolling boil. Skim any scum. Boil hard until setting temperature is reached (105 C) – or until a little of the mixture, dropped onto a chilled plate, sets with a slight wrinkle. Pour whilst hot into sterilised jars. Allow to cool slightly then screw on the lid.

Spiced Crabapple Jelly:

Proceed exactly as above really. Collect as many crabapples as you can, wash and coarsely chop, maybe just chop in half. The Good Housekeeping Institute doesn't bother cutting out the blossom ends, and neither should we. Throw apples into your preserving pan and cover with about an inch of water - we are not bobbing for apples here. Add spices as set out below if you wish. I've made all three versions, and they are equally good. Bring carefully to the boil, then turn heat down and simmer for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and boiling over. Don't stray too far from the pan whilst simmering, as the fruit does mash rapidly and can form a thick crust that bubbles up and all over the hob. Allow to cool slightly then pass through a jelly bag for 24hrs.

Return to pan and measure juice; for each 1 pint add 1lb sugar. Bring gently to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then boil rapidly for 10 minutes until setting point is reached. Pour whilst hot into sterilised jars, cool slightly then seal. Makes a lovely amber-glowing jelly, so place on your kitchen window sill over next couple of days to enjoy the sun reflecting through your stash! Gastronomic stained glass windows...

Spiced Crabapple Jelly 1.

Add a teaspoon of whole cloves with the water. Proceed as above.

Spiced Crabapple Jelly 2.

Tie 2 broken cinnamon sticks, 1 tablespoon cloves and 1 teaspoon allspice into a square of muslin and add to the apples. Remove the spice bag after apples have boiled for 5 minutes. Proceed as above.