Marmalade - How to Eat - Recipe #1

Some time ago Toasty bought a bunch of preserving jars at Ikea, which have looked decorative, in an empty kind of way, ever since. In late February a chance reading of a Nigel Slater column from the Observer suggested that these jars would look excellent filled with sunny bitter orange marmalade. A perfect antidote to winter blues.

Nigella Lawson had simple recipe for marmalade in her compendious "How to Eat", so that will be the first recipe from the first cookbook- Toasty hopes that Ms. Lawson feels special!

Seville Orange Marmalade

700g Seville (bitter) oranges- from Whole Foods in Feb. They freeze well.

1.2 litres water

juice of two lemons

1.4 kg sugar


Bring the oranges to a boil in the water, then simmer vigorously for ~2 hours, until they are soft. Remove the oranges, SAVING THE WATER, and cut up the pulp and skin into very fine shreds (unless you are a person of chunky marmalade, eugh!). The pulp at this stage is very soft and is attached to the skin- there is also a lot less of it than you might expect. Save the pips from the oranges and boil them in a small volume of water for five minutes.

Put the chopped oranges and lemon juice in a bowl and add the "pip" water, with the pips strained out. Then return the orange mixture to the original pan of water and warm at a low heat. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved (its a LOT of sugar). Bring to the boil and cook until set- allegedly you can test this by taking a teaspoons worth of the mixture and putting it on a cold saucer until it cools, if it sets it will wrinkle when prodded. Toasty found this test was pretty ambiguous and ended up slightly overdoing it, about 20 minutes was probably what was needed rather than the half hour the marmalade actually got.

Remove any surface scum and pour into warmed clean jars.

Toasty is very pleased with this marmalade, a nice balance of sour, bitter and sweet and perfect with the food of the Gods that is...... toast!