Marmalade, a recipe with friends.

Marmalade, a recipe with friends.

I’m not a fan of marmalade, but I couldn’t resist an invitation to participate in the making of some with friends.  Won’t you come along?  You don’t have to like marmalade either.

First collect friends on the appointed date and drive up over the green escarpment across the ridge and back into a fold to Julie’s place.  Five acres, planted with mulberries, and all kinds of citrus trees – grapefruit, orange, lemon – and a koi pond in the deck and a territorial view.  On this day, the grapefruit was ripe and its pink flesh sweet and the trees were over-producing.

Out from the boot comes kilos of sugar and a wild collection of saved bottles and jars – all shapes and sizes, hidden away until Julie’s trees drip with fruit.  Knives and towels, aprons and jars.  

On go the boots — Wellies and the Blunnnies – me, underprepared for the slippery grass in my well-worn flip-flops, but I manage, muddy toes and all.  The bins and bowls under the trees soon fill with ruby grapefruit and large yellow  lemons, and a few are collected to take home as well to use fresh or covered with salt as preserved lemons.  Off come the shoes at the door and in come the dogs, feet just as muddy.

Wash and slice and hull out the fruit.  Squeeze the last drop of juice into the stainless steel pans.  Remove the white pith and scrape to the skin.  Slice julienne slivers of bright yellow skin from 20 or so.  Wendy is best at this and she shows us how to slice tiny and fine.

We follow a recipe I’d found on the Internet that asks for one kilo of fruit to one kilo of sugar.  No grandma’s recipe had been found, so we go with what we have.  When we have a batch of fruit ready and weighed, we add the sugar and start the slow boil.  Julie stirs.  We add lemon pulp and peel for pectin and watch it carefully.  We chat.  We chop and squeeze the juicy fruit.  We laugh and talk trash and drink ice water for now.  It’s warm in Julie’s kitchen.

Batch #2 gets the same treatment – cut and hull, squeeze and slice very fine.  Chat and laugh – laughter, of course, the finest ingredient.

The color of the cooking marmalade is glorious – sunset orange/pink or is it pink/orange?  Julie paints in acrylics, Wendy paints in oils, and I paint in watercolors. That color is destined to show up in someone’s work soon.  We all remark on its saturation.  And the perfume fills the room.  Breathe it in deep.  Bathe in it.  Rub it into the skin.

Boil the jars and keep them warm, lids too, though most are refrigerator bound unless their lids seal.  And bound for friends too. I wonder if they like marmalade.

Boil and boil gently until the fragrant juice balls on a cold plate.  Ladle it slowly into the jars, clean the lip, and screw the lids down tight.  We run out of time and take some home to finish, to boil or bake and ladle again.

Our friend Margot made hers by herself, from Julie’s grapefruit she took to her home in the New England hills, three hours south.  She found her grandmother’s recipe that called for 2 kilos of sugar to one of fruit rather than the one to one we’d used, and hers was a clearer jelly and sweeter on bread.  I’ll use that recipe next time, but include the laughter and friends and a warm kitchen if I can.

I haven’t been a big fan of marmalade.  In fact, I just couldn’t see what others liked about the tart/sweet taste.  I loved making it though and hug the morning close to me, like a warm old shawl.

But I think I’ve found a taste for that marmalade after all.  I put some on a cheese platter in place of quince paste, thinking that the tart taste might be a good counterpoint to cheese, soft and smooth, hard and tasty – a nice crunch with the ooze and slide.  It’s a lovely leap into a new treat.  

I’ve reassessed.  I’m a marmalade fan, after all.  

Cheese plate with marmalade

In a small bowl, place 1/2 cup marmalade.  On one side, place a wedge of hard cheddar type cheese or a stilton, a soft blue/camembert, and a mild Gouda.  On the other, arrange a selection of crackers and crisp flat bread.  Serve with a “sticky” — ice wine, or a dry port, or a late harvest Shiraz from the Adelaide area of South Australia.

I’ll bet you’ll become a marmalade fan too.