Blood Orange Marmalade | A Bear Called Paddington
'I daresay you'll be wanting some marmalade.'
A Bear Called Paddington
Michael Bond
My life has been taken over by marmalade while in lockdown. I've made so many batches of it now I've taken to sending it off to friends across the country, with my fingers crossed that there are no leakages within the journey (only one so far and I kind of blame the post for that!).
Despite never really taking to marmalade in my youth - who would want orange flavoured sugar when you could have jam? - it's begun to take up a spot in my cupboard in recent months. I still stay away from the traditional orange marmalade, but the flavours with a more sour or tart note have definitely grabbed my focus. I've sampled so far blood orange, pink grapefruit, kumquat, tangelo and a few other varieties - but the blood orange has almost definitely solidified itself as a favourite.
Of course, there's no other book that this meal could be from other then Paddington. I don't think much of an explanation is required there.
Blood Orange Marmalade
Makes approx. 1 ltr of marmalade
Ingredients
5 - 6 blood oranges
1 k of white sugar
2 lemons
Water
Half and juice all the oranges into a bowl. Use a spoon to scrape the flesh, pips and white membrane of the oranges out as well, keeping them to the side.
Using a sharp knife, slice the peels of the oranges thinly - you want the strips to not be more than a few inches long and quite thin. Place into the bowl with the juice. You want around 1 litre of juice now, so if it's too low add some water to compensate.
Gather all the insides of the oranges together (seeds, membrane, flesh etc) and using a cheesecloth (or anything else that will work), make them into a bundle with the cloth. Place the cloth bundle into the bowl of juice and refrigerate the entire lot overnight.
The next morning place a plate into the freezer so it's ready for when you need to test the marmalade.
Transfer the juice, cut peel and bundle of the orange insides into a large pot and bring to a slow simmer. Leave on the stove for around one hour - or until the peel has softened. Leave to cool.
Remove the pieces of peel and place to the side for later. Strain the juice, getting rid of any flesh parts of the orange that may have snuck in, making sure that you liberally squeeze the cloth bundle, getting as much juice from it as possible. The juice likely will reduce when you cooked it - so measure it and add water in if needed - you should have 750ml of it.
Place the strained juice back into the saucepan onto a medium heat, adding in the juice of both lemons. Add in the sugar and stir until it dissolves. Add the peel back in and bring to the boil.
Leave to boil for around 10 minutes - to test if the marmalade is ready, take the plate from the freezer and drop a spoonful of the marmalade onto and wait around 20 seconds. Use the spoon to push the marmalade across the plate - if it wrinkles when pushing, it's ready.
Leave the marmalade to cool before distributing it evenly into clean, prepared jars. Enjoy!