Preserved lemons #preservedlemons #orangesandlemons

Continuing the lemon and orange glut theme, today I preserved some lemons.  Why haven't I done this before?  It's so easy.

Firstly, scrub your lemons.

And then leave the washed lemons in fresh water, changing the water each day for three days.  Yes, that's right, three days.  In one of the recipes I read it says the soaking helps to rid the lemons of gas(?) and assists in softening the rind.  Okay.  Sounds reasonable.

Sterilise some jars.  ( I just put them through the sauce-pan setting in the dishwasher, or you could wash them and them warm them in the oven).

Cut the lemon into wedges and sprinkle each wedge with about half a teaspoon of salt and drop the wedge into the jar.  Keep doing this until it is packed full.  During the packing stage you can add some spices.  One recipe I read suggested adding bay leaves and birds-eye chillis. I added fennel seeds and star anise.

Lastly, boil water and fill the jars with the water.  Screw the lids on tightly immediately. As the jars cool, a vacuum should occur, sealing the jars. You should hear the lids make a "popping" noise at some stage, indicating that the jar is sealed.

Leave the lemons for at least 40 days to cure. When the lemons are ready to be used, keep the open jar in the refrigerator.

The rinsed lemon rind (the flesh is bitter) of preserved lemons are great for marinades and a range of recipes.  Simply google "preserved lemon recipes".

Or, you could use the whole lemon wedges for stuffing poultry etc. I use lemon wedges, along with a couple of bay leaves, to stuff chicken prior to roasting.  I think the preserved lemon wedges will add a more intense flavour than fresh lemons.  I'll let you know how it goes - in forty days.

What to do with a glut of oranges? Orange Cake of course #orangecake

So it is the end of winter, with a glut of oranges and lemons.  What to do? This display of oranges and lemons on the kitchen bench would be about 1/100th of what is left on mum's trees.  So what to do with oranges and lemons?  We've already made vats of orange marmalade and orange and lemon marmalade.

Scrub the truckload of oranges well.

This orange cake recipe calls for a whopping 2 whole oranges!  At this rate, I'll be making orange cake every day for the next year. But maybe I'll have to preserve them first? I'm also trying out preserved lemons.  I'll let you know how they go in a few days.  I'm channelling Elizabeth David.

Boil oranges on the stove for 2 hours. I had to add water a couple of times because of evaporation.

Puree whole cooked oranges once they have cooled to room temperature.

I'm very fond of this Sunbeam Super Freeway.  It was given to me by my brother Ralph as a wedding present back in 1983. Wow, it has performed well.  I may have lost a few of the attachments over the years but as a blender, it has been wonderful.

See.. they're pureed.

Crack six eggs and 250 gm or 2 cups of caster sugar into blender or mixer.

Blend together sugar and egg mixture with pureed orange and 250gm  or 2 cups of SR flour

 For those of you who are gluten intolerant you could use 2 cups of almond meal and 1 teaspoon of baking powder instead of the flour. My daughter is allergic to almonds, and knowing that her and her friends will likely hoe into the cake on their next visit, I chose the wheat option. I try my best not to harm her.

Pour into a baking-paper lined spring form tin. I find with this teflon tin, I only have to line the base.
Good. I don't do fiddly.

Cook for an hour to an hour and a quarter at 150 degree celsius (300 farenheit)
Test with a skewer.
Okay.. I forgot to set the timer.. but good enough!

You can sprinkle the cake with caster sugar, or even put many holes into it with a skewer and pour in a
nice orange liqueur like cointreau.
However, I chose to make butter and orange marmalade icing, using my 3 generations marmalade.
Very cool.

Butter and marmalade icing

For the icing you need to blend:
3 cups of icing sugar
2 teaspoons of marmalade
1/2 cup of butter
small amount of water to ensure a thick spread.

There you go.  Two more oranges used up.  Anyone have other suggestions?


Postscript:  My husband says this is the best cake I've ever made! Wow. That's a compliment. While I don't make cake a lot.. I've made my fair share, so to say "best ever" is a big call.  What I'm amazed at is that the cake is so moist, even days after it has been made, and yet there is no oil or butter. I must be the oil from the orange skin that helps to keep it moist. Not sure.  But I will definitely be making this again! The orange/ citrus flavour is devine.

3 Generations Marmalade #marmalade #oranges and #lemons

Still life of marmalade preparation by Colleen Duffy, now exhibiting at Nepenthe Wines.

Okay, I'm late to marmalade making.  Given it is a full two day commitment, I somehow never got around to it during my full-time working years.  Life is a bit slower now (I keep telling myself).

Thoroughly wash oranges and lemons.  I used a vegetable scrubber.

This week I busted mum out of the nursing home and we were joined by my sister and daughter.   I highly recommend enlisting family and/or friends for this job. As someone once said, 'many hands make light work'.   Plus, it so much more fun!  It was hard getting a word in as we sat around the table peeling, pithing and cutting.

Mum's beautifully hands.

Mum could always peel a whole orange in one piece.  It is her gift.  And she was able to pass on to my daughter Hannah the art of dropping the peel onto the table, to determine a letter.  Of course, the letter the peel makes is the first letter of the name of the love of your life.  Hannah had some horror moments and kept re-throwing the peel, hoping to get a different outcome.

G or P? Even a T with a flourish?

Peel the fruit

Remove the pith as it makes the marmalade bitter. 

The pith is a good source of pectin, used to set the marmalade.  Save some of the pith to put into a muslin bag, to cook along with the fruit and water.

Cut the fruit into small pieces.

Orange marmalade

Orange and lemon marmalade.

We made orange marmalade as well as orange and lemon marmalade.

Mum was the font of knowledge when it came to the method but for the quantities I hunted out a few recipes but eventually settled on this formula.

For every one kilogram of fruit, use one litre of water and one kilogram of sugar. 1:1:1

For the orange marmalade we used 2 kg of oranges, 2 litres of water and 2 kg of sugar

For the orange and lemon marmalade we used 2 kg of oranges, 1 kg of lemons, 3 litres of water and 3 kg of sugar.

The oranges and lemons were off 60 years old trees, from mum's family home. The oranges are the best tasting navels I've ever had.  I remember taking these navel oranges to netball as a child. The home team always had to supply the oranges at half time. The navels are so easy to peel and they have no pips. The lemons are seedless Eureka. Juicy, fat lemons with no pips. Amazing.

Thoroughly wash the jars.

If anyone has any tips on how you get particularly stubborn glue off jam jars, please let me know!  I soaked some of these jars for an hour, scrubbed them with a scourer and put them through the 3 hour saucepan setting in the dishwasher but they still had huge amounts of glue sticking to their sides. Aarrgghh

Soaking fruit with water and pith (and pips if you have them) in muslin (or chux!)

Mountains of sugar about to be warmed in the oven to help it dissolve quicker.

Pips are full of pectin, so having no pips in either the oranges or lemons, meant I needed to add pectin or Jamsetta to the marmalade to help it set.  The pith in the muslin just wasn't enough.

Sterilise the jars and lids by putting them in the oven on low (130c) for 15 minutes.  Hot marmalade must be put into hot jars, otherwise the glass could crack. As the jars and marmalade cool you will hear the lids pop as the vacuum seal is activated. This means the jam can keep in the pantry for a year or so without spoiling.  However, once you open a jar of marmalade, keep it in the fridge.

It's a messy business.  But worth it.  Our marmalade is quite dark as I boiled it for over an hour, trying to get it set before I twigged to the fact that no pips meant I didn't have enough pectin.  Once I put the jamsetta in, the marmalade set in 5 minutes!  Learn from my mistakes.  Less cooking makes lighter marmalade.  Still, the darker colour looks luxurious to me.

Yummy with an espresso coffee at breakfast.


Method:

Day 1

Wash and scrub fruit
Peel fruit and cut peel finely
Remove white pith and any pips and keep separate
Cut fruit into small pieces
Put pith and pips in muslin bag
Put fruit, peel, water and muslin bag in large pot and soak overnight (helps with pectin extraction)
Wash jars and lids

Day 2

Cook fruit in water until soft (about 1.5 hours)
Warm sugar on low oven (130c) for about 15 minutes (dissolves quicker)
Add sugar to fruit mixture on low heat and stir until dissolved (add jamsetta at this stage if you didn't use pips.  25 gm jamsetta per kg of fruit)
Bring to boil
Hopefully it will set after about 15 minutes.  This will mean you have a light coloured marmalade.
To test it is set, put a teaspoon of marmalade on a cold plate (put plate in freezer to cool).  After about 40 seconds, marmalade should crinkle when touched.
Warm jars and lids in low oven to sterilise and to ensure you are adding hot marmalade into hot jars to avoid explosions.  Have oven mitts on hand! Or even on your hands.

Voila!

Chocolate Cake #chocolate #cake #comfortfood

Let's face it, some weeks call for chocolate cake. This is one of those weeks.  There's something comforting about baking, particularly baking a decadent chocolate cake with butter and chocolate icing. Sure you can bake a chocolate cake for a celebration but it is a great stress buster as well. Although perhaps it is a celebration of sorts.  I'm celebrating surviving the week.  As this is my place of "niceness and beauty" I won't go into the details, but suffice to say, I NEED chocolate cake.

I like to get everything ready before I start the baking.  Baking needs to be a lot more precise than cooking up a main course, where you can add this and add that depending on your taste and your mood.  Don't try a little bit of this and that with baking, you need to measure precisely.  Having said that, I always add less sugar than the recipe says and have never regretted it.  So there you go, contradicting what I just said.  Go figure.

For this cake recipe, you will need to put the oven on low - about 140 c fan force or 150 c for non-fan force.

And you will need to gather the following ingredients:
 200gm of chopped dark chocolate
1/4 cup of cocoa powder
250 gm of unsalted butter
1.5 cups of water
1.5 cups of caster sugar
1.25 cups of self raising flour
1/2 cup of plain flour
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Line a spring form cake tin with baking paper.  I use the tin as a stencil, placing it on the baking paper and draw a line around the tin to guide the cut.  High tech.

 Melt butter and chocolate gently on low heat. Add water and sugar and stir to dissolve sugar.

Allow to cool slightly before pouring it into a mixing bowl. Sift flours and cocoa and add to chocolate mixture in the mixing bowl. Add eggs and vanilla essence.

Mix by hand or by electric mixture until very smooth.

Pour into cake tin and bake for about 1 and a quarter hours.  Test with skewer to make sure it is cooked.  Allow to cool slightly before removing from tin. NB, this is a moist cake and you have to expect cracking - but don't worry, it will be covered by delicious chocolate icing soon.

To make the icing, mix together 2 cups of icing sugar, half a cup of cocoa with half cup of soft or melted butter and churn.  Add a few drops of water to get the right consistency.   Spread on a completely cooled cake, cut and scoff.

Lovely with a hot cup of french earl grey tea or a magnum of champagne.