Just over a week ago I was teaching marmalade making in the sweet English-style – with a jellied pectin set and a faint bitterness to the flavour – at the huge fish market cookery school – at the first @yawatahama_marmalade_festival @marmaladeawards, helping to get the mighty #marmaladefestivaljapan off to a grand start.
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The fruit I’d used was from a 127 year-old #natsumikan #ナツミカ #夏蜜柑 tree that I’d climbed up a steeply terraced hillside to pick straight from the old tree. Each orange was ripe but utterly firm and heavy, about 700g each. The recipe I used was pretty much my grapefruit marmalade recipe from @goodfoodau, google – Dan Lepard grapefruit marmalade- to get it.
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I juiced the fruit and refrigerated it, cut the this spankingly fresh peel into quarters and soaked it overnight to help the pith break down and release pectin. Then the next day I simmered it in an open pan until it was tender when poked with a chopstick. I then drained the peel (kept the cooking liquid and tested it for pectin and acidity), scraped the pith away and discarded it, then finely sliced the soft peel, returned it to the pan with the sugar and bought to a simmer, then switched the pan off and left it overnight for the peel to soak up sugar. I then bought it back to the boil, cooked it to the setting point, and hot bottled it.
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The biggest query was perhaps over the hot bottling method, as the government recommended preserves be cold bottled then boiling-water-bathed with the lid on to “sterilise” the preserve. In the UK and Australia we hot-bottle which also creates a hermetic seal when the lid is tightly screwed on the hot bottle.
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The marmalade came out beautifully and I even bought jars home. We’ll taste some hopefully at next Sunday’s @cookeryschool sourdough masterclass. I say “hopefully” as I haven’t checked my suitcase to see it it survived the flight.
