Blood Orange Marmalade

Marmalade is much easier to make than most people presume (particularly made in small batches like this one). There are plenty of recipes dedicated to making jams and jellies with low sugar content. This is not one of those recipes. Marmalade is traditionally a sugar preserve -- so I make no apologies about the sugar content of this recipe. This is a very elemental, traditional use of the naturally occurring pectin present in citrus to turn it into a delicious preserve. That's right: no powdery packets of pectin, no guessing about whether the acid and sugar content will be just right to make the pectin gel. With fruit, sugar and a little time you can make an irresistible marmalade. You can swap out other citrus fruit for the blood oranges to vary the recipe. (Meyer lemons are intoxicating.) It is fantastic swirled into plain yogurt-- a much cheaper alternative to individual flavored yogurts.

My instructions call for just a sharp knife, but if you happen to have a juicer, then by all means use it. Just be sure to grate the peel before juicing. I use a coarse grater to grate my peel -- I love biting into a robust strip of peel. If you prefer a more delicate texture, then you can use a zester.



3 Blood Oranges
3 Lemons
2 c. Sugar
Pinch of salt

Yield: 2 c marmalade

Grate Peel: Using a coarse grater, grate the outer layer of the peel from all of the oranges and lemons. Set Aside.

Cut Fruit: Using a very sharp knife, cut off the top and bottom of each orange and lemon. Set the fruit upright (on the flat surface that you just cut). To remove the rest of the the outer skin and pith, cut strips of the skin away from the fruit, following the curve of the fruit. So start with one strip cut top to bottom. Then follow right behind cutting the peel away in 1/2" strips, until you have worked your way around the entire fruit. Discard the trimmings of pith and skin. Slice the skinned fruit into 1/2" thick rounds.

Cook Fruit: Place the cut fruit and sugar in a large stainless steel stockpot. Place the pot over high heat and stir. Stir vigorously to break up the fruit. At this point you really only care about breaking up the fruit. When the fruit is thoroughly mushy, turn off the heat and pour the fruit and sugar mixture through a sieve. (If you are juicing the fruit, you can skip this step and go straight to cooking the marmalade)

Cook Marmalade: Add the reserved peel to the fruit and juice mixture and pour back into your stock pot. Place over high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Once the mixture is boiling, turn the heat down to medium/low. At this point you are essentially waiting for liquid to evaporate. You will need to stir the marmalade frequently to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The mixture will begin to thicken after several minutes of boiling. To test the consistency of the marmalade, drip a little bit off of your spoon onto a cold, ceramic plate. The ceramic will cool down the test very quickly and you will be able to see what texture your marmalade is. Remember that the pectin will continue to firm up for a day or two in the fridge, so you should stop cooking your marmalade while it is still a little runnier than you want the finished marmalade to be.

Store: In the refrigerator for several months. Of course you can sterilize and seal this recipe in jars too, but stored in the refrigerator there is no need for these additional steps.

Potato Skin Crisps

As I have mentioned before, potato skins can be put to good use in making a flavorful batch of broth. But they are also quite tasty cooked all by themselves. Recently I made a huge batch of sunchoke soup (incidentally if you ever have the better part of an afternoon to kill and feel like you need a good, tedious task to calm your nerves, I'd recommend peeling sunchokes. It is one of those interminable, manual cooking tasks -- right up there with skinning chestnuts and cracking almonds. ) In the end I had a wonderful sunchoke soup, and a big pile of peels. So I figured that it was high time for me to figure out the nuances of crisp potato skins (or sunchoke skins, really any root vegetable, but I think that sweet potatoes might be too fibrous to be terribly palatable).

Salted and cooked to a delicate crisp, potato skins are an intoxicating blend of earthy and ethereal. They taste, well, a little bit like dirt -- but the most delicious, wholesome, addictive dirt that you can imagine. Think of them as the strange looking, interesting uncle of the potato chip. You can eat them as an appetizer or snack, or sprinkle them on top of any dish that you'd like to add a little crunch to.

While the procedure is simple enough, I spent a surprisingly long time fussing with it to get these to come out just right. A lot of recipes call for a high cooking temperature and just scattering butter over the skins. This procedure gave me a half batch of charcoal crisps and some undercooked, lackluster skins. I found that a quick saute in butter evenly distributes the butter over the skins. Then cooking at a medium temperature for a longer time gets all of the skins crisp, without burning. If you know you want to make a batch of crisps, you can reserve your peels in a bag in the freezer until you have enough. Take a little more care and cut your skins into long, even strips (about 3"), and they will be the perfect size to serve as an appetizer. Smaller, uneven crisps (like my sunchokes) can be used as an accent to another dish.

Yield: 2-3 servings

3/4 c. Potato Skins (or similar)
1 T. Butter
salt
pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Saute Skins: Melt the butter. Toss in your skins. If you are using previously frozen skins, make sure to let any excess water that the peels have released steam off at this point. Cook for 1-2 minutes on medium heat, stirring. The skins should be evenly coated with butter and steaming.

Bake: Let the skins cool for a few minutes. Spread them out onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Make sure that you are separating them into one layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes. Stir the skins, (just to rearrange them on the sheet). Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until all of the skins are crisp. You won't see them brown very much because of the darker color of the skin. You can snap one or two to test for crispness, remembering that they will continue to crisp as they cool.

Store: Store cooled crisps in an airtight container for up to a week (but I don't think they'll last that long..)