Intent Cordial

Well, today we were hoping to make lemon cordial. Not strictly seasonal, but we hoped that the experience would prime us for things like elderflower and nettle later in the year. Unfortunately, we need citric acid for that (for the "preservation" part) and there's none to be found in the shops hereabout. I wish there were proper chemists still.
Nomatter, because I've bought some on the internet, which is not how I'd prefer matters, but a necessary evil.

We Marmamade Marmalade

well, as my esteemed colleague and co-conspirator has set out our stall pretty well, I shall set about filling it up with marmalade. People tell you you need loads of equipment for marmalade, but you really don't. Our biggest extravagance was a 20 litre stock pot, which we justified with the thought that we might one day need to make a few gallons of stock and in any case, I suspect that this won't be the last time you see it on this blog either. We've been saving up jars for a little while too leading to a fairly motley collection of them, but it doesn't matter. The only specialist jammy thing we bought was a muslin bag, available in your local hardware shop and probably in Ikea too.

We used Delia's recipe on the UKTV food site because it's a hardwired British thing to trust her implicitly, despite her tendency to overcomplicate things, and because it was free.

We weren't sure how much marmalade would fit in the pan so we just went with the quantities specified, although it turned out we could've fit double into the pan. Double the quantities, I mean, not ourselves doubled over - it's not that big.

We bought a bag of seville oranges and two bags of sugar, then we began...
After juicing the oranges, we set about chopping up what remained. Like so.



I'd never made the connection between the shreddy bits of marmalade and the actual orange peel which as any fule kno ye cannae eat. Turns out of course, that you can. This is probably not news to any of you, but I was amazed by the elegance of the process. The pips and pith went in the muslin bag, which we'll come back to later, meaning the whole of the orange is used. It's beautiful, in its own way.

I've said orange all the way through, although I should at this point make it clear there's also a lemon in there.

The little shreds were hard for me to get little enough and I certainly scored the chopping board a little. I had to forcibly remind myself exactly what it was I was making. Into the pot it all went, together with truly heroic amounts of sugar, with the bag tied to the handle of the pan.



Two hours later, it was beginning to look like marmalade.



We squeezed the bag, which after two hours had turned quite unpleasantly jeely-like. Hazel, I admit, did most of the squeezing, because it was giving me awful Coral Island flashbacks and unpleasant intimations of my own mortality.
It was not eyejelly though or ectoplasm or any of that whatnot, but pectin.
I mentioned earlier that Delia likes to make things complicated - in her recipe we're following she starts to go on about saucers in the fridge. We ignored that and seemed to do ok.



We put it all in and simmered some more. By now it really resembled honest-to-goodness marmalade, so as we were in the home strait we decided to sterilise the jars. I had imagined, and not for the rhetorical purpose of explaining it to you, gentle reader, that it was going to be a complex procedure, probably because of the medical connotations of the word, but actually we bunged them in the oven at about 160 degrees c on a sheet of newspaper for about 20 minutes while we refrigerated a small sample of the marmalade to see if it would set. When we found it was setting it was into the still warm jars with it..



You might notice a funnel lying there, unloved and destitute-looking. In deference to the recipe, we did try to use a funnel, but there was no way my thick shreds would fit through it. Serving spoon it was then. I made a wee bit of a mess, but it was a fun mess to make, so i make no apologies.
We had some buns I'd made (from a recipe from Greenway's excellent blog) left over and by Timothy, they went well.



And there's the first fruits of our endeavour, with circles of baking parchment stuck in the top of the jars. I'm quite proud of it!

The Shelf Preservation Society Way

Greetings!
Welcome to the Shelf Preservation Society, where myself and Dr Pessimist Anticant will share our journey into the world of conserving, preserving and fermenting.

Several motives drive this exploration. The enjoyment gleaned from learning new skills plays a large part, as does curiosity about the methods by which different foods are made. Imagining proudly giving friends and family our own produce, being able to experiment with combinations of ingredients and getting creative in the kitchen also feature. We might save a little money in the long run (perhaps), and we might be able to help to keep dying crafts and skills alive. We will be trying to ensure we decrease our food miles, and reuse glass bottles and jars, so the impetus is also an ecological one. We will be able to enjoy asking the advice of friends and family who have learnt these skills, and thanking them with a full jar or bottle.

The key aspects for me, however, are preventing wastage of produce from our kitchen garden, thereby helping us to better sustain ourselves from that homegrown, organic produce, and pursuing a DIY approach to life. Going a little further towards liberating us from the role of consumer, with all its dependencies and vulnerabilities, and increasing our resilience in uncertain times.

To those ends, here in The Society kitchen, we will attempt to produce one new preseve, conserve, pickle, chutney or ferment every month for 2010, and invite you to join us on our journey. Wish us luck!