Bitter Orange Marmalade

In the alley behind KWeeks’s house there are three Poncirus trifoliata trees. Known more commonly as bitter orange, hardy orange, or sticky orange, it grows well even in cold climates, hardy to -10F.

Which means that these trees, neglected and largely left untended, are perfect for Baltimore, itself often neglected.

I had an entire blog idea in my head for this, but I completely forgot it before I wrote it down. It was a good one, though, genius level, in fact. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

So instead I will share an article I read this week in The Guardian, an article that gives me hope for the future (which is challenging to come by. Hope for the future, not articles from The Guardian.).

Evanston, Illinois, one of the most segregated places in the U.S., has become the first in this country (the world?) to begin the formal process of reparations for slavery.

You should really read the whole article and the story of Robin Rue Simmons and what inspired this transformative, reparative act, but in a nutshell, the city is providing grants to BIPOC people who wish to buy a home (along with support for renovating it) and making plans to build a new school in Ward Five, a historically-Black neighborhood that has never had a school.

They are funding these grants and the school with taxes from the cannabis industry, attempting to re-distribute wealth from a predominantly white-owned business sector that has, again, historically incarcerated Black folks for the very thing that white people are making money off of now (growing and selling weed).

When I read this, I fired off emails to Brandon Scott, Baltimore’s presumptive Democratic mayor, and Larry Hogan, our Republican governor with a history of hating Baltimore. I suggested they work together to legalize recreational cannabis and to put this type of restorative justice in place for the state of Maryland.

Rather than pay developers to tear down entire city blocks and then gentrify the shit out of them so that Black folks can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods, let’s lift up those same folks and get them started building generational wealth.

Let’s build/remodel/equip world-class schools and community centers in those same neighborhoods to educate our kids for free – fulfilling the promise of public schools (access to a high-quality, free education).

And let’s open up the cannabis industry in Maryland to BIPOC instead of reserving it for white wealth. This should, of course, come with commuted jail sentences (and an expunged record) for all people currently in jail for cannabis offenses. Full stop.

I have only gotten a form letter back from Hogan and the same from Brandon Scott (his at least said his staff will review my email; Hogan’s basically said, “Thanks for writing.”).

In the meantime, I shook the hell out of those bitter orange trees until the walnut-sized, fuzzy fruits dropped to the ground (mind the two-inch-long spiky thorns as you grab the tree). Their juice is mouth-puckeringly tart, and each tiny fruit has about 146 million seeds. On top of all that, some part of them when you squeeze them for juice is sticky – so sticky that I had to put my cutting board and good knives through the dishwasher to clean them off.

But the effort was worth it. This bitter orange marmalade takes two days to make and rewards the long-suffering with a bright, clean, tart/bitter/sweet spread. I imagine that it will be incredible on a cream scone with a generous slathering of clotted cream or extra-rich butter (cream cheese in a pinch).

I have five pints of this and will hoard it like it’s the last jam on earth, but I can see it making its way into a Victoria sandwich over the winter. If you have a bitter orange in your neighborhood, I highly suggest you shake the tree when it begins to lose its leaves and cover your head for the bitter oranges you shake loose.

Bitter Orange Marmalade

This recipe makes five pints total; I used half-pint jars because I never quite make it through an entire pint of any kind of jam. Know going in that the residue from these oranges is very, very annoyingly sticky. It will all be fine.

Ingredients

1 1/4 pound bitter oranges, well-washed

4 1/4 cups water

1 1/4 pounds sugar

Method

This bitter orange marmalade takes two days to make, and the first day is the soak.

Juice all of the oranges, and then strain the juice into a large jar with a lid. It’s okay if some of the pulp gets into the juice, but your don’t want the seeds in there.

Remove some of the pith – the white part inside the bitter orange – from the orange peel, but don’t be too precious about it. The pith is what helps the marmalade set.

Slice the peel into thin strips and place in the jar with the juice. Add water, stir, then let sit on the counter for 24 hours.

The next day, dump the juice, peels, and water into a large pot, cover, and bring to a low boil for about an hour and a half (or until the peels become translucent and soft). Your house will smell like bitters – antiseptic and pungent – so be warned but don’t worry. This goes away.

Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Bring the mixture back to a low boil, and simmer, uncovered, for about 40 minutes or until the marmalade sets.

Pro-tip: to test the set of the bitter orange marmalade, chill a small plate in the freezer, then spoon some hot marmalade onto the plate. Let cool for a few minutes, then run your finger through the marmalade. If it runs quickly back together, keep cooking. If the marmalade sea remains parted, it’s ready to can.

You can put this in a jar and keep it in the ‘fridge if you’ll eat it all in two weeks or so. Otherwise, plan to can in a water bath. SO EASY.

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Once the water is boiling, sterilize clean canning jars (with fresh lids) but dipping into the water and allowing them to boil for a few minutes. Dip the fresh lids in the water (and any ladles or funnels you’ll use to can. Success = properly sterilized jars).

When the bitter orange marmalade is ready, ladle into prepared jars (a funnel helps), leaving about 1/4 – 1/2″ at the top. Screw lids on loosely. If you don’t have one of those bright green canning baskets that make it easy to put jars in boiling water, sink a dish towel into the bottom of the boiling water so the jars don’t rattle as they boil.

Place jars in boiling water, making sure the water covers the lids by at least 1″.

Boil for 10-15 minutes (longer at higher altitudes), then carefully remove jars and place on a towel on the counter. Leave them completely alone for 24 hours.

You will know you have successfully processed your marmalade when you hear the satisfying “pop” of the center lid being sucked down. If you don’t hear it after 24 hours, press in the center of the lid. If there is some give, then it did not seal. You can attempt to re-process in a clean jar with a fresh lid, or you can put in the ‘fridge and eat the jam in yogurt, on oatmeal, with scones – anywhere you want some interesting, citrus-y goodness.

We Could All Use Some Sweetness: Vegan (Sugar-free) Mixed Berry Tart

*Glossy, delicious, vegan, and sugar-free (with no artificial sugar, either). Truth*.

Friends, if you are even a semi-regular reader of this blog, you know that the above headline for this recipe is an anomaly here.

I am a HUGE FAN of sugar. I like it in all of its forms.

I like it in the form of a big piece of cake, balanced on my chest as I lie in the bed and watch TV.

I like it in the form of empty wrappers of Dove dark chocolates, the ones that I used to hand out at the end of my yin classes at Yoga Tree.

I love drippy ice cream cones, cheesecake, caramel apples, scones, muffins, pies.

Watermelon and fresh peaches.

I. Love. Sugar. ALL OF IT.

So imagine my surprise as I find myself in week three of a seasonal Renewal with my good friend Martha at Full Moon Acupuncture with nary a fine grain of sugar anywhere.

THREE WEEKS. I have not had sugar for THREE WEEKS. I haven’t cheated (which I think is stupid language to begin with. “Cheat days” and “cheating” are, in general, ridiculous constructs when it comes to food, and I do not in any way, shape, or form condone the use of them. I use it here to indicate that I have, against all odds, stuck with the program and eliminated all processed foods, including sugars in all forms, for a period that will last four weeks-ish. But I digress.)

Thankfully, and speaking of Weeks, my particular friend KWeeks had a birthday October 1st, and it is traditional for the birthday people in my life to get the dinner and the dessert of their choice on their day. KWeeks has simple taste, so dinner was (for him) French lentils over cornbread and topped with a fried egg.

TRUST ME. This is rustic and delicious. But I couldn’t eat it. See referenced Renewal above. And it’s hard to not share a meal on the birthday of someone you love.

He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I thought perhaps I could make something sweet that we could both eat.

Enter the vegan, sugar-free mixed berry tart.

Apple syrup made from 100% cold-pressed apple cider provides the sweet, and the gluten-free crust is six simple ingredients: walnuts, almonds, oats, salt, coconut oil, and apple syrup. Technically the oats are not allowed in the Renewal (no grains), but everything else is so damn good for you it doesn’t seem to matter.

It’s pretty, and it’s festive, and it gets real close to satisfying my (still) voracious appetite for sugar.

Vegan (Sugar-free) Mixed Berry Tart

KWeeks and I ate about half of this on his birthday and then shared the rest with his vegan co-workers at The Friends School of Baltimore. They have not been the beneficiaries of my baking, ever, and I am glad to finally be able to have something to share with them.

Ingredients

80 grams almonds (about 2/3 cup)

80 grams walnuts (about 2/3 cup)

70 grams oats (you guessed it: about 2/3 cup)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1/4 cup + 3 tablespoons apple syrup (divided)

1/2 cup lemon juice/water combo

1/2 teaspoon agar

3 cups chopped fruit of your choice (see Recipe Notes)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 350. Use cooking spray to grease a 9″ tart pan with removable bottom (you can use butter if you don’t want to keep it vegan) and set aside.

Place almonds, walnuts, oats, and salt in a food processor, and pulse to chop fine.

Add coconut oil and 3 tablespoons of your apple syrup and pulse until the mixture begins to come together. Dump into your tart pan and press into an even layer along the bottom and the sides.

Bake until brown and the bottom is firm (between 15 and 20 minutes). If the edges of the crust begin to burn, pull the tart out of the oven and place aluminum foil strips over the edges, then replace and finish. Remove to a wire rack and cool completely while you make the filling (the ‘fridge is great for a quick chill).

To make the filling, place 1/4 cup apple syrup and the 1/2 cup of lemon juice/water combo in a saucepan with the agar. Whisk to combine, and bring just to a boil.

Add the fruit and stir. Warm the fruit (especially if it’s frozen), then add to the chilled tart crust. Place back in the ‘fridge and allow to chill for at least three hours.

Serve with vegan whipped cream, or ice cream, or plain for breakfast. Just as you like.

Recipe Notes

Apple syrup is a delicious way to add sweetness to desserts (or yogurt or granola or whatever) without adding sugar. Well, ok, technically it’s fruit sugar, which the body does still recognize as sugar, but it’s not processed to within an inch of its life. Essentially, you are taking pure apple cider (NOT juice) and boiling it down until it reduces by half. I make this in two-cup batches, so I start with four cups of apple cider. Bring to a medium boil (not a simmer, but not too rolling either). Boil until the cider is reduced by half. If you want it to be even sweeter, keep going and reduce it even more.

Any fruit works here, fresh or frozen. I have used fresh and frozen blueberries, cherries, and nectarines in my tests, and they have all been delicious. You can also switch up the extracts if you like and use an almond extract, but use just 1/4 teaspoon if you do that.

Let’s Just Make It Easy, Shall We? Mixed Citrus Drizzle Cake

Sliced citrus drizzle loaf cake with red grapefruit and orange wedges on a wooden cutting board — *Go easy.*

FRIENDS. The Great British Bake-Off (The Great British Baking Show in the U.S.) has finished filming their next season, and GOOD LORD do we ever need some GBBO camaraderie.

The Great British Bake-Off is the nicest competition on TV. If you have been living under a rock, you might not know that this show pits 12 or 13 bakers in three specific tasks, one weekend a month for two months until the final baker is crowned the winner and receives…

A cake plate.

That’s it. All the final contestants get the same bouquet of flowers, but the winner gets a cake plate.

Yes, the winning spot comes with some amount of prestige and visibility, but the relatively low stakes means that these genuinely nice-seeming folks are supportive and wonderful with each other. There have been some controversial moments, but in general, the show has maintained its lovely manner.

The Great British Baking Show also gave us Mary Berry.

She likes to drink, and she eats out the side of her mouth, biting the fork every. Single. Time.

Annoying as hell, but one of the things she does that is incredible and revolutionary (besides knowing more about baking than most people forget) she calls the “all-in-one” method.

When it comes to cake, Mary Berry doesn’t cream the butter and sugar and then fuss about alternating dry and wet ingredients. She dumps everything into the bowl and beats the shit out of it, and it all works out fine.

This method, my depleted state, and my belief that we all really need a fucking break, has inspired this cake.

Also, the fact that I have excess citrus in my ‘fridge even though I am not a fan of citrus. You can use whatever you have, to taste.

AND. This cake comes together in less than ten minutes. Seriously. So like the lovely people across the pond, you could theoretically have fresh cake ready by teatime. If you are currently entertaining children at your home or trying to figure out WTF to do with them, this is a great cake for them, too.

Mixed Citrus Drizzle Cake

I am a big fan of using what’s laying around, especially now that going to the store is not always possible. This recipe is all about pantry ingredients. If you choose to use gluten-filled flour, don’t beat the cake batter as much or it will be tough. Otherwise, have at it.

Ingredients

For the cake:

10 tablespoons butter, very soft

1 3/4 cups gluten-free AP flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 eggs

6 tablespoons milk (any kind – I used oat twice)

Zest of one grapefruit (see Recipe Notes)

Zest of one orange

For the drizzle:

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup citrus juice (see Recipe Notes)

Powdered sugar (see Recipe Notes)

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter (or spray with cooking spray) an 8″ x 4″ loaf pan and set aside.

Ready? Dump all cake ingredients in one bowl and beat with a hand mixer (or a whisk – your choice) until it becomes light and fluffy.

Pour/shovel/scoop into prepared tin and smooth the top.

Place in oven and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cake is baking, dissolve sugar in the citrus juice. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a skewer and brush, pour, or spoon the drizzle on top.

Let the cake cool completely in the tin, and then unmold. Sift powdered sugar on top before serving. If you’re fancy and want to be very British, melt chocolate (milk or dark) and drizzle on top instead of powdered sugar.

Recipe Notes

The citrus zest combo is all up to you. I used all grapefruit, one grapefruit and one orange, and lemon for this cake. Mix and match with whatever you have. You are looking for a tablespoon or two of zest for a nice punchy flavor.

Juice is also up to you. If you have straight orange juice, lower the sugar a tad to balance the sweetness. All lemon? Bump it up to make it sharp (as Paul Hollywood says) without searing off your tastebuds.

Summertime In A Jar: Blackberry Jam

*Blackberry jam.* *Pure goodness. A rare and precious thing.*

One of the most poignant and bittersweet memories in my childhood is of steaming vats of water in an already-steamy, un-airconditioned rustic kitchen, used first to slip tomatoes of their paper-thin skins and then to boil Ball jars filled with said tomatoes, chopped, until the satisfying “pop” of a vacuum jar meant they were safe to store. These bright red jewels (and others, like blackberry jam, and strawberry, too) lined the shelves of the stone steps that led to a dirt basement under the kitchen and ensured a winter’s worth of sauce and a fresh burst of summer flavor on even the bleakest days.

I was a reluctant helper. It seems the sauce always popped when I passed by, burning my skin, or the tomatoes were stubborn in their skins. Mostly I passed through the kitchen as quickly as possible, fleeing to books or shady spots on our wooded property, ever-mindful of snakes.

These days I understand better the value of those jewel-toned jars.

They represent plenty, excess even, so much abundance that it must be stored away. They guard against want on short days with not much sun and preserve a summer’s effort so that you can slide into those lazy days when there is two feet of snow on the ground outside the window.

Blackberry jam is one of the first products of early summer, ready before tomatoes bent the shoulder-high tomato plants under their weight. Gathered carefully, ever mindful of snakes that enjoyed resting on their ample leaves, blackberries turned into sweet-tart blackberry jam are one of life’s best pleasures.

My lovely friend Martha of Full Moon Acupuncture has happy blackberry vines in her Baltimore backyard and is generous with them This blackberry jam is made with only three ingredients: blackberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Because blackberries are naturally high in pectin, it is not necessary in this recipe for low-sugar blackberry jam.

The formula for blackberry jam is simple if you want a stereotypical batch: weigh your blackberries and use an equal amount of sugar. For me, this results in sickly-sweet jam that tastes more of sugar than sunshine-y blackberries. For this recipe, I weighed my berries and used half that amount of sugar. You could use even less for a low- or no-sugar blackberry jam, but that would take longer on the stove.

Low-Sugar Blackberry Jam

(makes five half pints, plus a little leftover)

Weighing your blackberries is the best option here, as cup measurements are challenging. I use half as much sugar as blackberries – it’s a good formula for a juicy, blackberry-forward, low-sugar blackberry jam.

Ingredients

Just over six cups of blackberries, by weight (50 ounces)

Just under 3 cups of sugar, by weight (20 ounces)

Two tablespoons lemon juice

Method

If you are planning on water bath processing your jam, get your jars ready first. Wash jars and lids in warm, soapy water while you bring a stockpot of water to boil on the stove. Boil clean jars for two minutes, then move to a clean dish towel. Dip lids, ladles, and anything else you will use in the canning process into the boiling water and set aside.

Put a clean plate in the freezer to test the blackberry jam for doneness. This will become clear soon.

Place blackberries, sugar, and lemon juice in another large pot (leave lots of headspace for the jam to foam). Mash slightly and bring to a boil.

Play something nice on the radio, or load up a podcast. Lower heat to medium low, and stir as the jam boils/simmers. Stir the foam down as it rises.

Over time, your jam will stop foaming, become glossy, and thicken substantially. This could take between 20 to 30 minutes. Be patient. Be attentive. Take this as an opportunity to be mindful.

To see if your jam is ready, remove the frozen plate from the freezer and spoon a bit of jam onto it. Let cool for a couple minutes, then drag a finger through the jam. If it makes a path that does not get filled immediately by liquid-y jam, it’s ready to can.

If the path fills in with blackberry jam, keep boiling and stirring. Wash the plate, dry completely, and put it back in the freezer. Test after another ten minutes until the path your finger makes stays clear.

Ladle blackberry jam into prepared jars, leaving ¼” headspace. If you are not planning on water bath processing, set aside and let cool at room temperature without moving overnight, then move to the ‘fridge or freezer.

To water bath can, heat a large stockpot of water to boiling. Carefully lower the jars of blackberry jam into the boiling water (make sure the water is at least an inch above the jars). Boil for five minutes, then remove to cool on the counter overnight. Listen for the lid to “pop,” indicating a seal. This might take a full 24 hours. If the lids don’t pop, you could either remove the lid, add a new one, and reprocess, or you can place in the freezer or ‘fridge.

Blackberry jam is good in the ‘fridge for a couple weeks (maybe more, depending on how much sugar you used), and correctly processed for years.

Recipe Notes

You could make a sugar-free blackberry jam with sweet berries and lots of time, too. Keep the lemon juice to brighten up your berry flavor.

For a blackberry jam recipe with pectin, follow the directions on the pectin package for best results.

If you prefer a seedless jam, strain the jam after it thickens and before pouring into jars. This is a bit of an arduous task but results in a silky-smooth jam.

Go even further and add a tablespoon of fresh lavender to the jam and let it cool slightly before straining again and processing as desired.

Cold Candied Oranges

Glazed orange with strips of peel removed sits in a shallow crystal bowl on a blue background — Sunshine in the rain, friends. Sunshine in the rain.

Yesterday was SHITTY.

It doesn’t really matter which day “yesterday” actually was because, let’s face it, no one really knows what day it is, and if they say they do they are a bald-faced liar.

But yesterday. Woke up with another headache, many weeks straight, anxiety, overall fogginess in my whole body and brain. I was glutened accidentally a couple of days ago, and this accounts for some of it, but I think the general medical term for what I am experiencing is malaise.

I, and many all around the globe, are suffering from malaise: a general feeling of unwellness or discomfort whose cause is not possible to identify.

Yesterday seemed to be the culmination of a long-building malaise. The simplest of tasks were challenging, like swimming through pudding.

I have no solutions. I have no quick fixes. I did the long walk, I taught the yoga class, I hydrated like a motherfucker. I ate well. I took meds – prescription and CBD and allergy meds.

Today?

Today I feel a little better.

I am not going to say that these oranges were the thing that helped, but they certainly did not hurt. Long-time readers of this blog will recall my uneasy truce with citrus (my grandmother is now 101), but I actually went out and bought oranges on purpose for this use.

Correction: I bought them online, and Octavius from Giant on 41st, as wonderful a person as ever walked the earth, put them in my car.

This is not my recipe, these cold, candied oranges. This recipe belongs to The New York Times. Because they sometimes have an annoying paywall, I am going to go ahead and write things out here (copy/paste, actually). I cut the recipe in half because I cannot eat six of these, and even still I will give two away.

But my goodness. The orange, encased in a festively striped peel with the stained glass orange flesh peeking through, becomes plasma inside – not liquid, not solid. The peel keeps a satisfying chew, but the orange itself becomes Something Other, rising above its pedestrian squirty self. The flavor stays true to the orange, and once you’re done eating the orange itself, you’re left with a delicious orange simple syrup for the best old-fashioned you may ever drink.

Get at it. Can’t hurt.

Cold Candied Oranges

Ingredients

6 firm, juicy, seedless oranges with thin skins (Cara Cara oranges), no bigger than a baseball
6 cups granulated sugar

Preparation

Bring a stainless-steel pot of water to a boil. (It should be large enough to hold the oranges submerged.)
Wash and dry the oranges, and channel from stem to navel at 1/2-inch intervals, removing strips of peel while leaving the pith intact, until the oranges resemble those onion domes on Russian churches. (Suzannah’s note: I had no idea what a channeler was, but I actually had one in the drawer in my kitchen. I don’t know that you could substitute any other tool, but I suppose you could try).
Place the oranges and their long, fat threads of channeled peel into the boiling water, and reduce to a simmer. Cover the oranges with a lid one size too small for the pot, to keep them submerged. Let them blanch for about 25 minutes to remove the harshest edge of their bitter nature. They should swell and soften but not collapse or split. (Suzannah’s note: SIMMER. Not rolling boil. They will split)
Remove the oranges and zest from the simmering water with a slotted spoon, and set aside. Dump out the blanching water, and return the dry pot to the stove.
In that same pot, combine the sugar with 6 cups water; bring the sugar water to a boil over medium-high, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then allow to gently boil, and reduce for 10 minutes, uncovered. You want some water to evaporate and for the syrup to take on a little body.
Carefully place blanched oranges and zest into the sugar syrup, and reduce heat to a very slow, lethargic simmer. Cover oranges with a parchment circle cut slightly larger than the circumference of the pot (by 1 inch is enough), then place the too-small lid on top of the parchment on top of the oranges, to keep them fully submerged (and sealed under the parchment) in the sluggishly simmering syrup.
Cook the oranges in the syrup for about 45 minutes, checking on them frequently to keep the temperature quite slow and stable, until they take on a high gloss and appear vaguely translucent and jewel-like. (We have several induction burners that come with features that can hold a temperature, and I leave the oranges at around 170 degrees for most of the candying, sometimes with a little bump up to 180. But without a thermometer or an induction burner, just a visual slow, slow, slow bubble is a good cue.)(Suzannah’s note: I clipped a candy thermometer to the edge of the pot and watched the temp)
Cool oranges and peels in their syrup for a full 24 hours before serving. This kind of “cures” them. They get even better after 48 hours. First, you’ll want to let them cool at room temperature until no longer warm to the touch, at least 4 hours, then refrigerate them until thoroughly chilled. The oranges last refrigerated for 1 month as long as they are submerged in that syrup.
Serve very cold. Eat the whole thing, skin and all, with a knife and fork. It’s like a half glacéed fruit and half fresh fruit — refreshing, tonic, digestive and so great after dinner.

What helps your malaise?

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