marmalade

cooking secret no. 1

I know it's not exactly marmalade making season, and I know this is not the way devoted marmalade makers make marmalade. I would be a devoted marmalade maker, had I a tree and copious amounts of oranges( as I did in another life) but I live in England, and I simply don't want to buy them. Having said that, I just wanted to share with you how I can still get my marmalade making fix.

I once bought what I thought was a large can of orange marmalade, but when I opened the tin at home I found that I had actually bought a can of orange pulp used to make the marmalade. So I did and now I never buy marmalade from a shop. And that is how I have come to be making my own marmalade ever since - from a tin! So this is how I make it. It's terribly simple. You take one can,

and then open it:

the hardest part - opening the can

Then you pour the contents into a large saucepan and add three quarters of a pint of water (which is conveniently measured on the inside of the can) and add, wait for it, 1.8kg of sugar. That's an awful lot of sugar! But I make it with 1.5kg sugar - I prefer a less sweet marmalade. I even kid myself it's healthier.



sugar dissolving in 3/4 pint water with orange pulp

Anyway, pour the 1.5kg of sugar into the same pan and then proceed to heat until it is boiling.

(As you can see, I added a lemon whilst it boiled, for added pectin, I think, and a little tartness.)

Once boiled (and don't walk away from it because it will do what it did to me and boil right up and over the pot),

simmering marmalade

turn the heat down and simmer for another 15 minutes or until the jam 'wrinkles'. This happens when a spoonful is placed onto a saucer and let to sit for 2 minutes, and then a spoon is dragged through the middle of the pool of hot jam. If it wrinkles, then it is ready.

Leave for a couple of minutes, then pour into the prepared jars. In my case, I collect screw-top jars and first wash and then pour boiling water into them until ready to fill. This sterilises the jars.

Et voila. Six jars of home-made marmalade, without the fuss of cutting up all those oranges. Genius.

We love this marmalade, and prefer it to shop bought! And it's cheap. Each jar comes to about 30 pence, which ain't much at all.

olive oil bread

olive oil bread
Bourke Street Bakery
Paul Allam & David McGuiness

It's the weekend and that means more time for slow bread baking. Today I baked olive oil bread, as well as more sourdough. I wanted to have the bread ready for some warming soup because we are still in the grips of Winter here with temperatures not rising above 4-8 degrees C this week. Where's Spring? To be fair, it is a sunny day and it has amazingly lasted ALL day!

Anyhow, this olive oil dough was easy peasy to make. All ingredients went into the mixing bowl - the only difference in this dough to a usual dough was the addition of a little olive oil and milk - mixed very well for about 6 minutes. The result was a smooth, elastic dough:

Then it needed 1.5hrs of proving, with two knock backs at each half hour. After the second proving the dough looked like this:

 

 

After 1.5hrs the dough was divided into two pieces, each weighing 500g. The leftover 35g or so was put in a lidded plastic box and into the fridge until next use when it will be used as a 'ferment'.

 

 



These were covered loosely in cling film and after an hour they had doubled in size, until I tried to take the cling film off and mistake number one happened: I didn't flour the loaves beforehand and the plastic stuck so bad to the dough I had to tear it off, thus deflating my beautifully risen loaves:

Wah! So I floured them liberally and upended a large baking dish over them and let them rise a bit more:

Then it was into the oven for 20 minutes at 200 deg C.

And this is how they came out:

The smell was great. You could really smell the extra virgin olive oil.

Once cut, the crumb was lovely and open and the texture was crisp base and crust and soft and light crumb.

 

 

verdict: a definite 'thumbs up' with this bread. It was super easy to bake and I'm sure would have looked even better had I not stuffed up the plastic covering stage, ie not flouring the dough on top before covering with cling. But everyone loved this bread and I will definitely be baking it on a regular basis.

 

who can bake this? I would have to say that even someone who hasn't baked bread before can bake this loaf. It doesn't require any tricks or long proving. Well, I don't think it is long proving; others may disagree but all up it took no more than two hours from start to finish.

 

A great loaf, especially with good olive oil to dip into.

 

olive oil bread
bourke street bakery, Paul Allam & David McGuinness