Thursday 26 January 2012

amo amas amat

Amo amas amat,
A minibus,
A marmaladey cat.

Forgive the gratuitous regression to John Lennon quotes* and schoolgirl Latin, but I've been making marmalade this week.

We get through quite a lot of marmalade over the course of the year, so last Saturday I went and filled my shopping bag with 13lbs of seville oranges.

I made the first batch that afternoon.


More on Sunday



and the third lot on Tuesday. None of the batches came to setting point within the hopeful 15 minutes suggested in most recipes, so there was quite a lot of messing around with a thermometer and saucers chilled in the freezer. As you can see I have used a very motley selection of jars. There are 28 of them in a wide range of sizes.




So far I have used 8lbs of oranges and will be using the rest for Bitter Orange Ice-cream - a Nigella Lawson recipe from Nigella Bites which is totally delicious - then will be freezing any oranges remaining for future use.




I think three batches of marmalade already justifies the new preserving pan that I bought last week.


As a memorandum to myself for next year's reference. 2.5lbs of oranges seemed about the right amount to be able to boil the pan of fruit and sugar quite hard without overflowing


*I remember this as a quotation from a John Lennon poem, but can't find any confirmation on the internet.



1 comment:

  1. it's in his book 'In his own write' published in 1964

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