Negroni marmalade
Ingredients:
1 kilo unwaxed blood oranges
1 unwaxed pink grapefruit
2 unwaxed lemons
1.5 litres water
1.5 kg caster sugar
50 ml Campari or other Red Bitters
50ml Red vermouth
50ml London dry Gin
Sterilise 4 x 500ml jars, or 8 x 250ml jars
Wash all of the citrus fruit well.
Halve the oranges, lemons and grapefruit and squeeze their juice through a fine sieve into a large saucepan.
Take a firm tablespoon, or other tool of choice, and use it to gently scrape away as much white pith as possible from the insides of the squeezed fruits. You want ideally to see light shining through the dimpled golden skins, like a stained glass window.
Put all of this pith into a second saucepan, along with any pulp or pips from the sieve you strained the juice through, and any fruit debris from the juicer or fruits that might have ended up on your chopping board at any point of the process.
Pour 1.5 litres of the water into the fruit debris pan and bring it to a boil, then turn down to a simmer for an hour. Line a colander with a muslin square and pour the contents of the pan into it. Draw the muslin together and secure with string or an elastic band. Leave to drip in the colander over a large pan or bowl. (If you have the apparatus to tie it up in a jelly bag to drip, that’s optimal).
Slice all of the fruit peel into even strips – the thickness you choose is very personal, some prefer a wafer thin morsel, and some a toothsome piece of peel. Put these strips into the strained juice pan and simmer for around 45 minutes, until the peel is translucent. (Timing depends on the thickness of your strips of peel)
Breathe deeply – this aroma is uplifting.
At this point, if you’ve had enough, you can halt proceedings, even overnight. Just put the lid on the peel pan and leave the pectin dripping into its container. Have a Negroni. Read a novel.
When you are ready to power on, it’s time to attend to the pectin. You’ll have a good amount of cloudy marmalade-setting liquid in the container already, but now you need to squeeze that bag to release all of the viscous liquid. The harder you work now, the better set your marmalade will have.
When you’ve squeezed as much as you are prepared to, throw away the pith and pip pulp, and pour the pectin liquid into the pan with the delicious juice and peel. Also pour in the sugar, and set the pan over a medium heat. Bring the marmalade to the boil, dissolving the sugar, and scrape off any froth that appears on the surface.
Put a few saucers in the freezer, ready for testing the set of your marmalade.
Boil the marmalade hard for around 15 minutes before you start testing for set.
(The setting point is from 103 degrees c to 105 degrees c, depending on how set you like your marmalade, so if you’re unsure and own a thermometer, go ahead and test it with science. With a marmalade where you are adding alcohol at the end, the 105 degrees is best)
To test for the setting point the thermometer-free way, retrieve one of your saucers from the freezer and put a smear of marmalade on it, then put it straight into the fridge. After a minute, take it out and push your finger through it – what you are looking for is a wrinkled, crinkled appearance – if you don’t see this, carry on boiling the marmalade and test again after a few minutes. Once you get a successful wrinkle moment, turn off the heat, and stir through the Gin, Campari and Vermouth. Pour the marmalade into the prepared jars, seal, and label when cool.
Store in a cool dark place and refrigerate after opening.
Leek and Salers tart
Serves 6
Ingredients:
For the Pastry:
200g plain flour
100g wholemeal flour
A pinch of salt
150g butter, cold
2 egg yolks
1 – 2 tbsp cold water
For the filling:
50g butter
3 leeks
3 eggs and 2 egg yolks
300ml double cream
6 leaves of fresh sage
125g Salers cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
You will need a 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin
To make the pastry: (You can do this in advance if you like).
Sift the flours and salt into a large bowl (add the wheat germ from the wholemeal flour that collects in the sieve back in at the end) and grate in the cold butter. Rub in until you have fine crumbs. Add the egg yolks and enough of the cold water to bring everything together into a dough, then chill in the fridge until ready to use.
To make the tart:
Roll out the chilled pastry to fit the tart tin and trim the edges. Prick the base with a fork and put the lined tin in the fridge while you work on the filling.
Preheat your oven to 200C
Trim and clean the leeks, then finely slice them, including the greens. Chop the sage leaves too. Melt the butter in a large pan and add the leeks and sage. Stir to coat with the butter, cover with a lid and cook on a very low heat for 20 mins until soft, checking now and again that they aren’t browning.
Beat together the whole eggs, egg yolks and cream, and season generously. Stir most of the Salers into the mix.
Take the pastry case out of the fridge and line it with a layer of greaseproof paper and baking beans, then bake blind for about 10 minutes. Take the greaseproof and beans off, brush the case with a little of the filling mix and return it to the oven for a few minutes. This will help create a seal and prevent filling leakage later.
Reduce the oven temperature to 180c
Pour the filling into the tart case, top with the remaining Salers and bake for 25 mins, until golden with a slight wobble.
روز والفطائر الأرز بودنغ
Syrian rose and pistachio rice pudding
Serves 4
Ingredients
750ml full-fat milk
225ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, or 1 tsp vanilla extract or paste
2 tbsp caster sugar
180g pudding rice
1 tsp rose water, or to taste
2 tbsp chopped pistachios, to garnish
If using the vanilla pod, split it lengthways with a sharp knife and heat it gently in a saucepan with the milk, taking care not to let it boil over. Turn off the heat when the milk is hot but not boiling, and leave the pod to infuse for half an hour, then scrape the seeds out of the pod with a teaspoon and stir them into the milk.
If you let the rest of the vanilla pod dry, you can bury it in a jar of sugar as it will still have flavour to give, and you can use the sugar in other desserts. .
To make the rice pudding, bring the infused milk and cream back to the boil. If you didn’t use a vanilla pod, you can stir vanilla paste or extract into the milk and cream now.
Add the rice and simmer on a medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring frequently. The rice should cook through but still retain a bite and the pudding should be thick. You may need to add a little bit of water, up to 50ml, towards the end of the cooking if the pudding becomes too thick before the rice is done.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir the rose water through, along with a pinch of salt, then ladle the pudding into 4 dishes and chill them. Top with pistachios when you are ready to serve.