Pear Lemon and Lime Marmalade with cardamon

Its that time of the year again...Pear season.  We came away from visiting our dearly beloveds with a large basket of pears.  With pears there is the day they are perfect, and then afterwards it is a fast decline.  With a few set down in the freezer poached in port and vanilla, its time to come up with some preserves for the store cupboard.

Back in 2013, I made a delicious Pear and Lemon Marmalade.  I wanted to make a preserve this morning, but only had three organic lemons in 'store', and with it being cold and miserable, just did not want to go out to get more.  There were some organic limes ready for a desert, so a few of them were commandeered to join the preserve.

At knitting on Thursday Maggie was explaining a 'Victorian' Christmas cake recipe, where everything was made in the same pan, to avoid as much washing up as possible!  Well they did not have running hot water and detergents, and washing up must have been quite a chore.  I can hear Mr M saying 'it still is'.  Well he is away, and it is I who will be doing all the washing up.

This marmalade was therefore all made in the same pan: the pressure cooker.

I took 400g combined weight lemon and limes, first carefully washed, then chopped them into quarters, extracted the juice, then put the fruit skins and pips and cooked them for 12 minutes at full pressure with 500ml of water.  Meantime I skinned and chopped 800g pears, and tossed them in the remaining lemon and lime juice.

When the peel was sufficiently cool, after the membranes were scrapped off, the peel with all its pith still attached was finely chopped.  ( The last little detail was added for Jason who asked the question).  The pith really turns to a soft jelly like edge to the peel, and gives a good mouth feel in the final marmalde.

Thchopped peel was then put back into the pressure cooker with the chopped pear, and brought to pressure for another five minutes.  Meanwhile I pushed the pulp which includes the internal juicy parts of the lemons and limes, the scrapping and pips through a sieve, and this was then added with 650g sugar, to the pressure cooker as soon as it was cool enough to open. You are left with just a the pips and the bits which could not pass the sieve which go in the bin.  This is when the tablespoon of cardamon pods are added.  I had thought of adding juniper berries as I had done with Lime Marmalade once...maybe another time.

The next stage of boiling up the marmalade was done with the lid off!!!!  Towards the end of cooking when the temperature was about 103 C I fished out the pods, and using two forks, to prevent burning, I squidged out the seeds which went back in the pan, then just within few minutes and the magic 105 C was reached.

Of course the marmalade is rather fruity, but with just 650g sugar there are only two medium and two large jars.

All that chopping and washing up for just four jars....it will be worth it, I hope!

Seville 2017

During the first week in April...it may be as warm here in Wells as it is in Seville...I have to keep reminding myself that it is April and not May or June!

We have finished the last of the 2016 Vintage of Seville Marmalade, which was made from 2015 oranges...so it was time to make a new batch this weekend.  The Seville Oranges have been in the freezer for just a few weeks, and with some lovely fresh unwaxed lemons, I got 1 Kg fruit out to defrost on Friday.  Normally I would cook the fruit whole and cut after cooking, but this time, having felt the defrosted fruit, found that they were quite soft.  I chopped the peel finely, and added it to the 1 litre water in the pressure cooker, wrapped the segments and seeds in a muslin cloth and put that in the water too.  The whole lot was left to macerate till this morning.

I cooked up the fruit for 12 minutes in the New Pressure Cooker...12lbs pressure, they squeezed the bag of pulp and pips, and then added the sugar, and followed the usual boiling up, testing of temperature and also saucer test.  Can you see my new toy?  Well toy it is not...this is my new SuperFast Thermapen...what a boom, it takes just a few seconds to give an accurate read out.  It is MADE IN ENGLAND!  My old probe has lasted over twenty years...but you  had to hold it in the jam for ages as it took so long to get a reading!  It was my breadmaking friend Nigel who first showed this instrument to me via Facebook, for testing that bread was done...and I was hooked!

This year I have decided to make a preserve with less sugar...to 1 Kg fruit, I added the juice of two lemons, and 1.5Kg sugar, rather than 2Kg.

Most of the jars finished off as a classic Seville Marmalade...but I could not resist a little whiskey in two smaller jars!  Will Mr M who definitely does not like whiskey take to the Whiskey Marmalade?

Classic and Whiskey Seville Marmalade

Classic Seville Marmalade

What is Classic Seville Marmalade?  There must be so many...and all different, well even when one follows the same recipe different batches can taste different.

What Mr M wanted was a Marmalade, plain and simple: oranges, lemon juice and sugar.  Bless him!  He loves classic flavours.  Don't get me wrong, they are good, I like them, but I also like to take a recipe and add my twist.  I love spices and nuts, and unusual combinations.  I was chatting with my friend Janice last night, and it is the other way round in her household:  her husband likes the variations and she favours the more classic straight forward preserves.

This year I am following the classic route.  My Domestic Science teacher would approve:  I bought the first fruits of the season, always the best and freshest, and highest in pectin.  This year I have decided not to freeze any more fruit for preserves, of course unless this is purely for keeping a glut of fruit for which I have no time to deal with immediately, which I cannot give away, or have not time to deal with immediately.  Sounds like a New Year's Resolution to me.  This means there not be any mid year Seville Marmalade making....but it also means I can make special marmalades mid year, such as Pink grapefruit, and the Lemon, Pear and Cardamom Marmalade which is my favourite special marmalade from last year.

I consulted two of my favourite books: A little Course in Preserving by DK, and River Cottage Handbook. 

Over and above my own previous method(s), I opted for squeezing the juice from the oranges and keeping that in the fridge overnight.  I have a little wooden tool for spooning out olives from the olive oil, and tried this for fishing out the pips from the juice.  Just playing really, as I love my little wooden utensils. I left the shells and seeds soaking in the cooking water.  I covered them with a weighted plate to keep everything submerged.

In the morning the pips were surrounded by a thick jelly like substance.  This is the first time I have noticed this, and wonder whether this is the pectin coming out of the pips.  

Usually I pressure cook with the 10 lb weight, but felt the peel always needed further cooking, so this time I used the 15 lb weight for 8 minutes, and this was perfect. I did not add the lemon peel or pith, and pressure cooked the orange shells and pips with water.  

When I had sliced all the cooked peel, and pushed all the mush through a sieve, until it was too difficult and I had a sieve full of pips, I measured this mush, and all the cooking liquid and squeezed orange juice and weighed this and added a little more water to get 1700 g for each Kg of Oranges I started with.  This is in addition to the chopped skins.  This was following RCH's advice of measuring all the liquid and making sure that there was 1.7 litres to each original Kg of Fruit.  I would change this to 1.5 litres, or 1500g next time, as it took rather longer boiling to achieve the right temperate and set at 105 C.

I then went off to design this year's label, and the following morning, the labels were stuck on and the jars added to my Preserves Stash!

Pear, Lemon & Cardamom Marmalade

I love marmalade....toast and marmalade, home made bread toasted with melted butter and marmalade for breakfast.....delicious!  With fresh coffee and then the newspapers afterwards...all wrapped up in my lovely woolly dressing gown from Melin Tregwynt.  That's how we have spent this morning, with the rain dripping onto the conservatory roof. I look out at the damp garden and make up my mind to bring in my succulents.  Autumn is truly here, but what a glorious summer we have had!

Back to this most recent of marmalades....I love cardamom, in savoury dishes, but since I discovered the Hairy Biker's coffee cake, in sweet things too. 

I have pears to preserve/conserve, so looking through my books, I found this recipe in Seasonal Preserves by Joanna Farrow.  I bought a kilo of fresh plump lemons during the day, and planned for my next batch of preserves.

Hubby was going off for dinner with his college  friends,  I had all the evening to myself,  an evening of chopping and boiling...

My hand is still a little sore and as I tried the following:

'Halve and squeeze the lemons. Cut the squeezed lemons in half.  Using a sharp knife, flatten the peel down on the surface and cut a thick horizontal slice to remove the pith from the peel'...

I had thoughts of serious knife cuts and no one to come to the rescue.  Luckily I had only cut through the first lemon and tried this when I thought of a better way for me.  With a sharp potato peeler off came the zest,

then with the famous rocking action of sharp knife through the peel I was left with a bowl of fine pieces.  I was in the zone with great music in the background.

I then peeled and chopped through a huge pile of pears...well you need quite a few small pears to end up with 1.4 Kg prepared fruit.  All this whilst the lemon peel and pith was boiling away...next time I shall reduce the liquid to 1 litre and cook with a lid on.  My reasoning being that if the air smelt so wonderful, then I would prefer this aroma to stay in the liquid, and despite my extractor going full pelt, the walls were beginning to drip with condensation.  Even better, I shall use my pressure cooker, since I do this each time I make Seville Marmalade to reduce the cooking time dramatically.

Then the stirring fruit, sugar and spices starts: the smell was magical, but quite strong.  Before potting up I went fishing for most of the pods, that way to avoid having to pick them out when eating the conserve and I thought leaving them in would lead to too much cardamom flavour.  That evening I felt a little deflated.  So much work chopping and cooking, and maybe I would not like the preserve....I quietly tidied up, washed up, and lined up my jars to set overnight, and said a prayer to the Preserving Gods.

In the morning, I tried the little bit I had put by in a ramekin dish on my morning toast,  the smell was sharp and spicy, the taste far more subtle: tangy and mellow.  How can one have such opposite tastes in one mouthful?  Its the wonderful juxtaposition of lemon and pear...

A couple of weeks later the preserve has mellowed further, and is the marmalade of choice for the present. 

Interesting marmalades so far: Grapefruit Marmalade, Lime Marmalade, Grapefruit and Lemon Marmalade, Apricot and Orange Marmalade, Kumquat marmalade spiced with cardamom, and now this one.  All of them well worth the effort.  Of course for my son and husband, I will always make the classic Seville at the right time of the year: January, unless I have put some down for future use in the freezer.