Today I finally tended to the large bag of mandarins a friend had let me pick from his tree on a recent trip to Port Macquarie. I had two kilos so I doubled the recipe I found in Stephanie Alexander's A Cook's Companion.
Doubled:
2 kg mandarins
8 large lemons
4 litres water
4 kg sugar (woah!!)
Remove the zest from the mandarins and lemons with a vegetable peeler and cut into julienne. Juice fruit, reserving pips.
Cut remaining pith into strips and put into a muslin bag with pips. Tie firmly. Put into non reactive pot with juice, zest and water (oops- I only added 2 litres of water & didn't realise until the following morning) and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat and simmer with the lid just ajar for about an hour until the liquid has reduced by half (I had to do this for longer- more like two hours. Perhaps the heat wasn't high enough). Leave in covered pot overnight (including muslin bag).
Preheat oven to 180ºc. Squeeze muslin bag very firmly into reduced liquid (I kept my bags and will wash and reuse them). Bring liquid back to boil with pot resting on a simmer mat (I don't have one of these so I just made sure the heat wasn't too high.)
Meanwhile warm sugar in the oven. Add sugar to pot and stir until dissolved. I only ended up putting in 2kg. I felt that that was PLENTY and because I hadn't put enough water in I wasn't prepared to put the whole 4kg in!) Boil briskly without stirring for 5-10 mins until at setting or jelly stage.*
Bottle in hot, sterilised jars.
* To test whether a jam, jelly or marmalade has reached setting stage, put a tablespoon of the preserve onto a cold saucer and chill it for a few minutes. Push your finger through the middle of the blob - if it remains in 2 distinct halves, the setting stage has been reached. If using a candy thermometre, start testing at 104ºc.
And here is a sample of the end result:
Very yummy. Very sweet. Not something we'll be eating every day!
All dressed up with somewhere to go...
No comments:
Post a Comment