(can) jam session : a photoessay

because it is that time of year... Today I spent most of the day at Hrafinstaad with my dear friend Rois. Our mission for the day was to make marmalade. She herself is a true kitchen goddess. Her orange curd tart was truly delicious, as has been pretty much anything I've eaten over there, yet despite all the cooking, canning, curing and smoking that Rois and Chance have done, marmalade was one thing she'd not yet tried. We made a double batch, using some nice organic Valencia oranges. The basic recipe is the same as I use for all marmalade I make, really simple, the time consuming part is the parboiling. You can do other things while the citrus simmers, and we had plenty of time for tea and chatting and embroidery.

~ : ♥ : ~

a fair amount of equipment is needed to make canning an easy process

The oranges, once washed, simmer in a kettle of water for two hours

You will need the fresh juice of two lemons;
(I save the peels in my freezer to candy later)

Separate the pulp from the skins; slice the skins into narrow ribbons, and roughly chop the pulp. (orange marmalade has a few more steps than grapefruit marmalade *)

The orange bits go into the preserving kettle

Sugar and lemon juice are added

Once warmed and the sugar dissolves,
it will need to boil until the "setting point" is reached

As it gets closer, the peel becomes more translucent

After decanting and processing, the end result was many jars of sweet orange marmalade,

Which were pronounced delicious by her family

* there is less pectin in oranges, their skins are thinner. So it is needful to take some of the orange simmering water in a small pan, and add to it any and all of the seeds found when cutting up the cooked fruit. I add any tough citrus membrane bits, and the small stem-scar which I like to cut away from the peel. These all boil for about five minutes, to extract any additional pectin, then the enhanced liquid is strained and added to the orange-sugar-lemon mixture.