Seville Orange Marmalade

So, this posting of a recipe for Seville Orange Marmalade might come a little bit late in these gorgeous fruits' availability (if you hurry though, they're still available for at least a week longer here in the UK; I ordered mine in from Abel and Cole), but I've had the pictures waiting on my camera for well over a week so that I could make the first post on this blog!

A brief introduction to the blog and a little explanation behind the its name should come first; for the past three years (-ish), I've been in a steady relationship with my fiancée. However, we couldn't have more opposite tastes in food: he's almost completely "meat and potatoes", whilst I stick to a largely vegetarian, and sometimes pescatarian, diet. Because of this, I'm always cooking two separate meals and so am trying to find recipes that can be made for one. Sometimes this means adapting a recipe that normally feeds practically 400 so that it can feed just one (I won't try to take too much credit for this, as it only really involves a bit of simple maths), and sometimes it means finding recipes that can be frozen for later reheating or that can be kept in the fridge for a day or two. The latter only really works when reheating can be done successfully and still produce a (vague) representation of the original product; creamy pasta sauces, for example, are a little more tricky and not quite worth the effort. Anyway, back to the point... this blog will be focussing largely upon recipes that fit the above description, with a few random things thrown in that don't quite seem to fit the theme... like Seville Orange Marmalade!

After purchasing your lovely oranges and leaving them, displayed on a plate on the kitchen counter, to admire for a while, it's time to get down to work. This is a recipe originally shared by Nigella Lawson in her book How To Be a Domestic Goddess and, as she promises, it is very easy and entirely not intimidating to the first-time marmalade maker. In the run-up to actually making this, I saw so many recipes on the internet that made me wonder if marmalade was even possible as an end product of the recipes. But alas, trust in Nigella and behold her wondrous Seville Orange Marmalade.

After washing your oranges, place them in a large pot with enough water to cover them and allow them to float, bring to the boil and then allow to simmer for about two hours. Leave them alone, be free to use your time wisely. I'm sure I did. Sort of. (I most likely spent my time watching some terrible reality television program... very productive, of course...)

Actually, you can do something while you wait; you can assemble all your ingredients and equipment. These include some preserving sugar, a couple of lemons, a good knife and a sieve. Then go back to doing something completely (not) productive.

By the time the two hours are up and you have removed your oranges, they should be extremely soft. They might even look a bit deflated like mine did, but if this is the case, don't worry! Nigella also notes in her recipe that you can add more boiling water from a kettle if your oranges aren't covered up, but I didn't need to do this (perhaps because I kept a lid on the pot).

At this point, put a couple of small plates in the freezer to chill and put your dishwasher with your preserving jars in it on the shortest cycle. (If you don't have a dishwasher, here is a little link describing some other methods or jar sterilisation and heating.) Also, don't throw away all your beautiful orange boiling water; reserve as much of it will fit into a small-ish glass bowl.

Now, get to cutting your oranges in half and scooping out all their insides.

Put these insides in a small pot and add enough of the orange water so that the guts are covered. Bring this pot to the boil and then allow it to stay at the boil for five minutes.

While the orange guts are boiling, start cutting up the orange peel as thinly as you can, or as thinly as your tastes dictate. This might take a while; so if it does, strain the orange gut and water mixture into your large pot, ready for when you've chopped up all your oranges.

(Also, as a side note, make sure you remove all the little orange ends so that they don't end up in your finished product!

Yeah, those little bits.)

To your large pot, which should now be full of the strained orange gut liquid and all your beautifully chopped orange peel, add the juice of two lemons and stir in 1.4kg of preserving sugar.

Bring this mixture to the boil very gently, constantly stirring so that all the sugar dissolves before the marmalade actually starts boiling. Keep the pot boiling for about 15 minutes, when you should start checking to see if the setting point has been reached.

This is when those frozen plates come in useful. Remove one of them from the freezer, take a tiny spoonful of marmalade from the pot and put it on the plate. If, after ten or so seconds, it wrinkles when pushed with a spoon or your finger, it's all done! In reality, this might take up to 25 minutes or half an hour; however, I found that 15 minutes was definitely a good time to start testing. Also worth noting is that you should definitely wait until you see a proper wrinkle, not just some barely visible, not-quite-sure-if-it's-there wrinkle.

Ladle your finished marmalade into the dishwasher- (or otherwise-) prepared jars and close the lids immediately. Leave the jars on the counter to allow them to cool down. This recipe makes just over a litre of marmalade.

Seville Orange Marmalade 

(recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess) 

Ingredients 

800g (approximately) whole, washed Seville Oranges

1.4kg preserving sugar

juice of 2 lemons

prepared preserving jars

a couple of small plates  

Method 

1. Put the Seville oranges into a large pot, fill with enough water to cover them and allow them to float freely, bring to the boil and then allow to simmer for about 2 hours. (Add more hot water from a kettle if you find that the liquid is boiling away.)

2. Put your two small plates in the freezer to chill and make sure that your dishwasher cycle has started, or that the preparation of your preserving jars is otherwise under control.

3. When the oranges are cooked and very soft, remove them from their pot and reserve the orange boiling liquid. Cut all the oranges in half and scoop out their insides into a small pot.

4. Ladle some of the orange boiling liquid into this small pot so that the orange's insides are covered; bring to the boil and let boil for 5 minutes.

5. Returning to the disemboweled orange skins, chop them up as finely or as coarsely as your tastes dictate and put them into your original large pot. Strain the boiled orange insides in with these, add the juice of 2 lemons and stir in 1.4 kg of sugar

6. Bring the contents of this pot to a gentle boil, so that the sugar is able to dissolve before the actual boiling point is reached.

7. After 15 minutes of boiling start to check regularly for the setting point, using your chilled plates and the method described above.

8. Once setting point has been reached, ladle the finished product into still warm jars and close the lids immediately.

Enjoy the finished product on a slice of your favourite bread, toasted, with a good smearing of butter and with the marmalade spread generously on top.

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