Last week Jack and I drove out to the Chittering Valley, where the friendly people at Golden Grove citrus orchards picked 6 kilos of magnificent Seville oranges for us. As we drove home, the car was filled with the glorious scent of fresh citrus and we both inhaled deeply, imagining the marmalade already on our breakfast toast.

Today we cooked the last batch of oranges into marmalade, a process I have observed and in which I have participated all of my life. All of the women in my family have been careful housewives, making jams, jellies, marmalades, pickles, chutneys and relish from whatever excess fruit or vegetables came from the home garden.

It has always given me a great feeling of satisfaction to open my pantry door and offer a friend or visitor a jar or pot of jam or chutney. Somehow food always tastes better when you know that the fruit has been cut and stirred by hand and then bottled with love and a sense of pride in a job well done.

Here is the Seville Marmalade recipe, for you to try on some hot toast, in a bread and butter pudding or smeared over browned lamb shanks before baking for several hours in a low over.

Seville Marmalade (courtesy of David Herbert)

1 kilo (2 lbs) of Seville Oranges                 2 kilos (4 lbs) sugar

juice of 1 large lemon                                  1 tablespoon treacle

Wash oranges & place in large pan with 2 litres water. Bring to the boil & simmer gently for 2 hours (or until peel may be pierced with a fork). Remove from pan, reserving cooking liquid. When cool, quarter each orange & cut each segment into fine shreds, saving the juices and the pips (tie these in a piece of muslin). Place a saucer in the freezer.

Return cooking liquid to the pan, over a medium heat, adding the saved juices, the lemon juice and the muslin bag of pips. Reduce liquid by a third, remove the muslin bag of pips, add the chopped fruit and boil until reduced by a third.

Place clean jars into a medium oven, in a roasting pan. Add the sugar to the fruit, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Increase the heat & boil rapidly for 20 minutes before starting to test of setting point. To test for setting point, drop a spoonful of marmalade onto the chilled saucer and allow to cool. If the jam forms a skin & wrinkles when pushed with a finger, it has reached setting point. Remove pan from heat when testing. Allow jam to cool slightly, stir in the treacle and pour mixture into the hot, sterilised jars. Seal and store the marmalade.

What is your favourite homemade jam recipe? Do you still use a recipe passed down from Gran?

Please forward your favourite jam or marmalade recipe to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under Aunt Ruby Remembers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.