Italian, reduced sugar, three fruit marmalade
With Neil away and the book published, I've had time for some of the other things I love - one of them cooking. You can't get proper English marmalade in Italy - so I've been experimenting with the home-grown citrus fruit to get something that is tart enough but tastes of the Mediterranean sun.
I started with this - a bowl of grapefruit, oranges and lemons - just ordinary ones, not marmalade fruit. The grapefruit and some of the oranges are pink/red and that gives the marmalade a lovely colour. You need 1 grapefruit, 3 oranges (4 if small) and 2 lemons. Chop them into about 8 pieces each
and pop in a pan and cover with water. Leave to stand overnight so that the fruit flavour soaks into the water. The following morning bring to the boil and simmer for between 2 and 3 hours until you can cut the peel with a wooden spoon and most of the fruit pulp has cooked into the liquid.
Take the peel out, scrape away any remaining fruit pulp, and chop as thickly or as finely as you like it.
Boil the liquid down until only 500ml remains. Then add 400g sugar and bring to the boil until the liquid reaches marmalade temperature (109 degrees), or it wrinkles when a teaspoon is popped onto a cool saucer. Then add the chopped peel. Bring back to temperature - if no thermometer simmer for about another 5 mins. Then ladle it into hot jars and seal. Easy-peasy!
You'll need to keep it in the fridge because of the low sugar level, but it's delicious on toast! The Italians also eat marmalade with cheese .........
I started with this - a bowl of grapefruit, oranges and lemons - just ordinary ones, not marmalade fruit. The grapefruit and some of the oranges are pink/red and that gives the marmalade a lovely colour. You need 1 grapefruit, 3 oranges (4 if small) and 2 lemons. Chop them into about 8 pieces each
and pop in a pan and cover with water. Leave to stand overnight so that the fruit flavour soaks into the water. The following morning bring to the boil and simmer for between 2 and 3 hours until you can cut the peel with a wooden spoon and most of the fruit pulp has cooked into the liquid.
Take the peel out, scrape away any remaining fruit pulp, and chop as thickly or as finely as you like it.
Boil the liquid down until only 500ml remains. Then add 400g sugar and bring to the boil until the liquid reaches marmalade temperature (109 degrees), or it wrinkles when a teaspoon is popped onto a cool saucer. Then add the chopped peel. Bring back to temperature - if no thermometer simmer for about another 5 mins. Then ladle it into hot jars and seal. Easy-peasy!
You'll need to keep it in the fridge because of the low sugar level, but it's delicious on toast! The Italians also eat marmalade with cheese .........
I love this post, Looks both delicious and orderly,Reminds me of my daughter LickedSpoon's posts. Low sugar content is , of course, a good-health point, wx
ReplyDeleteThanks WEndy - yes, I try to keep my sugar consumption down - the Italians love sweet things!
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