epic marmalade!
So our tangerine tree gave us a bumper crop of nasty, dry tangerines this year. (The tangelo tree ten feet away is perfectly fine.) You know how once in a while you get an orange from the store, and the ends of some of the sections are kind of dry? And not orange? Our whole tree is like that, only they are funny all the way through. They just look real nice from the outside - the peel is fine, and some are better than others, so I am making marmalade.
I started out with a test batch in the bread machine, since it said you could make jams in there, and it came out like a really thick syrup, but was not marmalade. We ate half and I put the rest in a chocolate orange cake.
Several weeks later, now that all the tangerines were sitting there on the tree, inedible, I googled a bunch of recipes, and made a batch of real marmalade, the kind in jars. I put all the tangerines through the food processor. This required cutting out the cores and seeds and icky parts of peel, and running everything through the processor three times, and a whole afternoon. The kitchen and I were rather sticky. Add some sugar and water, and boil for a while. The internet says (all hail the internet), that you are supposed to cook it until it reaches 220-222*F. Joy of Cooking says 9* above local boiling point, which, same thing. If it doesn't reach the magic temperature, woe and syrupy jam unto you. I boiled that marmalade for over a fucking hour, and it stayed a steady 210* (not even 212*). So we finally gave up and put it in jars, and it seems to have come out fine, if rather thick.
Tonight I tried the version with pectin, off the instructions in the box. It never reached more than 210* either, so I gave up after about 25 minutes of boiling, instead of waiting till it had reduced by two inches (in a giant pot that is a lot, like 40%), like the last batch did. It came out even better, and somewhat better-looking.
However, I already have 14 jars of marmalade now, and I have used up less than half my processed tangerines. I will need at least another box of 12 jars (we already bought two, and had another six jars in the garage). Also I am not willing to buy another 3-5 boxes of pectin, and you cannot double the recipes with pectin. So I will be boiling more marmalade, and adjusting the recipe as I go, until I finish off all the damn tangerines.
Who wants marmalade? I will mail you some.
In other news, I finally listened to and copied the Tolkien tapes. I have these, the first two tapes. I got them from the ASU library, in, crap, August or so, and have been renewing them ever since. These babies are rare - go for up to $200 on Amazon, horribly out of print. AND ALL MINE! PRECIOUSSS!! Anyway, now I have grainily-recorded (originally grainy, that is, done at somebody's house in the fifties with a home device) readings of various poems from Lord of the Rings, as well as the entire riddle scene in Hobbit. You know how in Monty Python, when they do women's voices it sounds hilarious? Gollum sounds rather like that, with a Welsh accent on top. Also sung versions of two poems, which are kind of lolarious (Namárië set to a Latin plainchant - gee, I wonder whether he used to be an altarboy). Most importantly for my nerditude, I now have examples of authentic Elvish pronunciation. For my linguistics studies. Yes, that's it. I can share these, if anybody else is nerd enough to want them.
And in other cooking news, today I celebrated British Pie Week with a tasty apple-chicken-cider-leek pie, to which I added potatoes. It was a giant pie, and tasty. I need to do more stuff with leeks.
I started out with a test batch in the bread machine, since it said you could make jams in there, and it came out like a really thick syrup, but was not marmalade. We ate half and I put the rest in a chocolate orange cake.
Several weeks later, now that all the tangerines were sitting there on the tree, inedible, I googled a bunch of recipes, and made a batch of real marmalade, the kind in jars. I put all the tangerines through the food processor. This required cutting out the cores and seeds and icky parts of peel, and running everything through the processor three times, and a whole afternoon. The kitchen and I were rather sticky. Add some sugar and water, and boil for a while. The internet says (all hail the internet), that you are supposed to cook it until it reaches 220-222*F. Joy of Cooking says 9* above local boiling point, which, same thing. If it doesn't reach the magic temperature, woe and syrupy jam unto you. I boiled that marmalade for over a fucking hour, and it stayed a steady 210* (not even 212*). So we finally gave up and put it in jars, and it seems to have come out fine, if rather thick.
Tonight I tried the version with pectin, off the instructions in the box. It never reached more than 210* either, so I gave up after about 25 minutes of boiling, instead of waiting till it had reduced by two inches (in a giant pot that is a lot, like 40%), like the last batch did. It came out even better, and somewhat better-looking.
However, I already have 14 jars of marmalade now, and I have used up less than half my processed tangerines. I will need at least another box of 12 jars (we already bought two, and had another six jars in the garage). Also I am not willing to buy another 3-5 boxes of pectin, and you cannot double the recipes with pectin. So I will be boiling more marmalade, and adjusting the recipe as I go, until I finish off all the damn tangerines.
Who wants marmalade? I will mail you some.
In other news, I finally listened to and copied the Tolkien tapes. I have these, the first two tapes. I got them from the ASU library, in, crap, August or so, and have been renewing them ever since. These babies are rare - go for up to $200 on Amazon, horribly out of print. AND ALL MINE! PRECIOUSSS!! Anyway, now I have grainily-recorded (originally grainy, that is, done at somebody's house in the fifties with a home device) readings of various poems from Lord of the Rings, as well as the entire riddle scene in Hobbit. You know how in Monty Python, when they do women's voices it sounds hilarious? Gollum sounds rather like that, with a Welsh accent on top. Also sung versions of two poems, which are kind of lolarious (Namárië set to a Latin plainchant - gee, I wonder whether he used to be an altarboy). Most importantly for my nerditude, I now have examples of authentic Elvish pronunciation. For my linguistics studies. Yes, that's it. I can share these, if anybody else is nerd enough to want them.
And in other cooking news, today I celebrated British Pie Week with a tasty apple-chicken-cider-leek pie, to which I added potatoes. It was a giant pie, and tasty. I need to do more stuff with leeks.