Easter Lunch menu

Fino sherry
Mixed Olives
Smoky Spanish Marcona Almonds

Slow Roasted Andalusian-Style Lamb with Potatoes
Grilled Asparagus with lemon

Seville Marmalade ice cream (recipe follows)

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Seville Marmalade Ice Cream
Ingredients:
2 extra large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup homemade Seville orange marmalade

Instructions:

1. Whisk eggs in large bowl until light and fluffy, 2 minutes. 
2. Whisk in sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. 
3. Pour in the cream and milk, and whisk to blend. 
4. Pour mixture into ice cream maker and process until ready, about 1 hour.
5. Pour in marmalade and blend for 1-2 minutes.
6. Serve!

Makes 1 quart.

 (Based on Sweet Cream Base in Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Dessert Book, Workman Publishing Company, 1987).

Sour Orange Ice Cream

Third day of exploring the orange and marmalade culture of Central Florida, and we tasted wild orange ice cream at the Hemlock Inn in the Highlands Hammock State Park (floridastateparks.org/highlandshammock/). The ice cream was the bribe to convince my ten-year-old to go for another walk in the forest where we thought we encountered a Florida panther three days before. She wasn't too keen to return (neither was I). We did not run into a panther on the return visit, but did encounter a wild pig rooting around for oranges dropped from the wild orange trees growing amongst the palms and other trees. (Sorry, I didn't get a photo of the wild pig, as I was too busy walking away--quickly.)

In my family ice cream is what you always have in moments of crisis, so we went to the Hemlock Inn, as I said, and ordered our ice cream. (They make sour orange cheesecake and sour orange pie, too, but the woman at the counter said it hadn't set up well that day, so they couldn't sell it.)

It had a lot of ice crystals in it (that happens when you freeze homemade ice cream) but it had a nice, subtle orange taste--like a really good Creamsicle. The woman who served us didn't know, but I suspect they made the ice cream from those Calamondin oranges, because there was a huge tree nearby loaded with them.

I think I shall have to try making some when we get home. Maybe some marmalade ice cream too.

Calamondin marmalade anyone?

So, still in Central Florida, and this morning, we went to McCracken Farms (mccrackenfarms.com), a small, family farm in Sebring. Riding in a golf cart through the groves, we inhaled the gorgeous scent of orange blossoms and fruit and saw pink-and-yellow wild yarrow along the paths. When we stopped, our guide cut open a Honeybell orange and a tangerine for us to taste before we picked. (Actually, he picked more than we did, as we were too busy taking photos). As a Northerner, I've always wanted to pick oranges straight off the tree, and so my loving husband documented the experience for me:

On the ride back, I spotted trees with tiny, round oranges, which our guide said were Calamondins, a cross between a mandarin orange and a kumquat--"a very sour orange," he said. We tasted them, and they were very sour indeed. "Perfect for marmalade, though, so I brought some home.

Since I'm on vacation, I decided to go for easy and tasty--not pretty and Marmalade Awards-ready (dalemainmarmaladeawards.co.uk) I threw them in large pot filled with water and boiled them for nearly an hour--until the skins were soft, and they were nearing collapse. 

Then, because there was no food processor in the house where we are staying, I put the Calamondins, in into the blender and to try and chop them roughly. (Remember, I'm not going for beauty, but taste and ease.) It didn't work, so I ended up smooshing them in my hands, breaking up the skins and taking out the seeds.

Next, I boiled them up for 15 minutes. Which turned out to be too long. Alas, my gorgeous Calamondin marmalade turned into marmalade toffee. 

Delicious, (that perfect combination of sour and sweet) but useless, unless you think marmalade candy is a good idea.

I will have to try this again. If anyone out there has made marmalade from these tasty little oranges, can you please let me know?

Aftto collapse.

My Marmalade Vacation in Florida

On vacation in Sebring, FL with my parents, who have rented a villa in this Central Florida town. Central Florida is known for its citrus groves (the Florida Natural and Tropicana orange juice factories are in this region), so everywhere we drove, there were miles and miles of oranges and grapefruit which thrive in the sandy soil and high annual rainfall. There are even a grapefruit and orange tree in the backyard of the villa where we are staying. The fruit looks brown and unappetizing, but we picked some, and the grapefruit was juicy and sweet, as were the oranges.

On the drive back from Orlando (Universal Studios and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, for the ten-year-old in our group), we stopped by Davidson's of Dundee (dundeegroves.com), a marmalade and orange candy factory and store.

This place, whose citrus candy operation has been featured on the Food Network, makes nine kinds of marmalade, an orange-pecan-cinnamon preserve, four kinds of citrus jelly (Key Lime, Orange, Pink Grapefruit, and Tangerine), and orange "butter" made from finely chopped citrus peel.

Their marmalade was a very pretty: clear jelly with peel suspended in it. But I have to admit, we didn't love it, as it was made with corn syrup--way too sweet for our taste. It's a lovely place to visit, though, and the citrus candy was nice. They even had milk chocolate alligators for sale, which I was tempted to buy for my godson's Easter basket.

Tomorrow, we're going to McCracken Farms (mccrackenfarms.com) to pick oranges; I can't wait!

Fruitful research

Just gave my 92-year-old grandmother my last jar of pink grapefruit marmalade (she says she's addicted to the stuff), so am eagerly awaiting the advent of the citrus season in November/December . . . . 

In the meantime, I am researching marmalade around the globe and have discovered some interesting things about marmalade-making in India, thanks to my glamorous, actress friend Fiona Martinelli, who moved to Bangalore last year with her husband Nick and her five children. She put me in touch with Geetu Singh, who has given me so many wonderful resources, and here's some of what I've learned: 

• Historically, expatriate Britons made something they called "country marmalade" in India from pomelos, the thick-skinned and rather coarse ancestor of the grapefruit.  

• Marmalade has been a popular jam among the upper classes and, to some extent the middle classes, in India for a long time. It has been commercially produced for many years under the Kissan (Farmer) brand, and many Indians buy that brand, as their parents did before them. 

• There are also many home jam makers and communities from the state of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and the city of  Ooty, and others who love to make and can this jam, in season. For instance, Linnet Mushran (a Briton by birth) has led a group of inspired women in the fruit orchards of Himachal Pradesh, sourcing fruits directly from local small farmers and making homemade preserves and marmalades to provide a source of income for their families. What started as a small kitchen operation now employs and supports more than 100 women in the community.

• Rangpur limes (Citrus x limonia), a lemon and mandarin hybrid, originating in India, is best known for the fine marmalade produced from it, which is reputedly even better than that from Seville oranges. The fruit is grown in India, California, Australia, and Hawaii. I would really LOVE to get my hands on some of these and make some marmalade. Anyone know where I can get some?

I just find all this fascinating. Please write to me if you live somewhere other than England or the U.S. and are making marmalade. Tell me what citrus fruits you use, and tell me why you like "marmalading . . . ."

Marmalade Stories

One of the joys of writing about something you love is "meeting" all these wonderful people around the world who feel the same. I was recently corresponding with a delightful gentleman called Lachlan Shackleton-Fergus from Australia who, in February, won a gold medal at The World Marmalade Awards in Cumbria, UK (http://www.marmaladeawards.com/). (With a name like that, you'd expect him to make great marmalade, and he does. We also think we might be related somehow. We Scots have to stick together.)  


I was asking him what compelled him to start making his own--because it is a compulsion. He started making marmalade from Sicilian lemons growing on the island of Malta, where he lived at the time. He made hundreds of pounds of marmalade, and gave it away to the locals, who were not familiar with it. But he kept making it. And now he makes it and wins awards and sells it--alot of it. Check out his website: http://jbshackletons.com.au/

My best friend Jo was lucky enough to grow up with a mum who made her own, delicious Seville orange marmalade. But she grew up in England; I grew up in a rural part of New York State, where the only marmalade was Smucker's, and it got spread on the Easter ham. It wasn't anything to write about, that's for sure. 

But in 1986 I was an undergraduate studying for a semester in London, and I took the overnight ferry from Holyhead (Wales) to Dun Laoghaire (Dublin, Ireland) for Spring Break. (I couldn't afford warmer Southern European destinations, and nobody wanted to go where it was cold and rainy, so I went by myself). I arrived at a B&B in the Dublin suburbs at dawn, and the kind landlady took one look at me, and said, "you go on up to your room, and I'll bring you a nice breakfast tray." The breakfast tray contained: a steaming pot of strong tea, homemade toasted bread, creamy and salty Irish butter and her own homemade marmalade. I will never forget how that meal made me feel--warm and looked after--and how the marmalade tasted: sour and sweet and slightly bitter. And it was so beautiful to look at. 


Lachlan's description of eating marmalade as a student short on funds at Cambridge conjures up similiar images and feelings: "Marmalade, thickly spread on toast dripping with butter, browned on a three-pronged fork over a little room in front of the fire was a ritual." 

In 1987, when I was able to spend one term at Oxford, I didn't have the sitting room with a fire or the three-pronged fork, but I made a beeline to the Frank Cooper Marmalade shop on the High Street and stocked up on the dark, thick-cut marmalade. I was addicted to it.

Back in the U.S. (Washington, DC, working at Washington National Cathedral) I tried to find a way to make my own homemade marmalade because I missed the taste of it. I tried making some from sweet navel oranges, but when my best friend Jo http://www.projectmarmalade.com/ came to visit, she took one taste and said, "What is THIS?"

When I moved to Boston in 1995, I found a place in Harvard Square that sold MaMade, which is Seville oranges and pectin in a can; just add sugar (http://www.amazon.com/Hartleys-Orange-Made-Thin-850g/dp/B000JL2KQ2), so I tried that. It was pretty close to the real thing, so I happily made another batch and then another. Then I got bored and decided to add some Glenmorangie single malt Scotch whisky. I sold it at a holiday fair for $10 a jar. I thought about making it and selling it commercially, but I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I kept my day job in publishing. 

Now, I make it every winter, from grapefruit and sometimes kumquats, as they seem to taste the best. I use Nigella Lawson's easy pink grapefruit marmalade recipe http://low-cholesterol.food.com/recipe/pink-grapefruit-marmalade-195086 because I am very lazy. And I experiment, sometimes using all dark brown sugar, which I like because it makes the marmalade all dark and rich and treacly. 

Maybe when I'm old I will have a dark green, enamel AGA stove http://www.agaliving.com/our-products/classic-aga-cookers.aspx in my kitchen and several cats, and I will "marmalade" all winter long and give jars away to the postman and to all my friends. Wait--that's kind of what I do now, except without the Aga and the cats. We're working on getting a cat, at least.

Please write and tell me why/how you started making your own marmalade?

A short history of well-travelled marmalade

It began innocently enough. My friend Jo in London, who is also obsessed with marmalade, was trawling the Internet one day and found a company that imports a coffee marmalade she wanted to try. The importer is in the U.S., but the coffee marmalade is made in Sicily. My friend first asked if the coffee marmalade could be shipped directly to her in London (England being closer to Italy than the U.S.). Apparently, it couldn’t. So she asked me if I could order it, then send it to her in London, so she could taste it and review it on her blog. She kindly offered to pay me for the shipping with dollars she has stashed away somewhere in her rambling house in north London. But I told her she could just send me a Fortnum & Mason chocolate rabbit for my daughter’s Easter basket instead. So far; so good.

I called the importer, a company called Gustiamo in New Jersey (www.gustiamo.com). A lovely lady (Martina) took my order, and as we were chatting, I mentioned to her that the coffee marmalade was for my friend in London who wants to review it on her blog. I placed my order, got off the phone, and went to make myself a well-deserved cup of tea. A little while later, the phone rang, and it’s another lovely lady from Gustiamo—this time the boss, Beatrice—who said she heard about the marmalade blog, and she would be happy to send the coffee marmalade at no charge to us. I said, "thank you so much" (thinking to myself in a Paddington Bear-like way that this could be the start of something truly wonderful—getting jars of marmalade in the mail for free!)

A week later, my little package came with not one, but two jars of Sicilian coffee marmalade. So the little box of marmalade, which had already crossed the Atlantic once (from Italy to New Jersey), is now wending its way back across the Atlantic again, from Boston to London. 

If you are curious (as I am) to find out what it tastes like, check out my friend Jo’s blog at http://www.projectmarmalade.com/ in a few weeks’ time. She needs to give the marmalade time to get over its jet lag.