Think about marmalade and Christmas
My old and trusted recipe normally gets a good handful of lemon verbena leaves and flowers into the pot when cooking marmalade. This time around it was time for a tangy, zesty citrus fruit with cinnamon, cloves, star anise and cardamom.
I used my old and trusted recipe as published in The Practical Cookery Book for South Africa by S van H Tulleken with the preface written by Issie Smuts and printed in 1923.
Slice the oranges without peeling them, refusing the pips only. They should be very thinly sliced. Measure 3 cups of water to one cup pulp, and leave it for 24 hours; then boil it up till the fruit is quite tender and the water gluey (it is well to boil it thoroughly, otherwise it will take too much sugar, and will be very sweet, instead of doing the boiling without the sugar, it will have to boil so much longer after the sugar is added to bring it to the proper consistency, and will then be much darker too. After boiling leave it for another 24 hours. Weigh and add 1 cup sugar to 1 cup pulp.
Boil rapidly till it will jelly when tested. Care should be taken not to allow it to burn; it must be stirred frequently when it begins to thicken, but stir it as you would for porridge; just scratch the marmalade from the bottom of the pot to prevent it from burning, stirring the fruit about as little as possible. Sterilize bottles by putting them in the oven for 15min before using them.
A nice twist is to add a dash of brandy on top of the marmalade in the bottles before you seal it.
Christmas twist:
I add cinnamon sticks, star anise, whole cloves and bruised green cardamom pods, bruised tied in a piece of muslin cloth to the water when boiling the fruit in water.
I use three lemons to five oranges.
Maybe I've just missed your posts! I sold my home and am traveling about. If I get anywhere near Kameel I'll kom kuier!
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