We had a very exciting week at Farmer's Daughter making our first ever batch of marmalade. The marmalade is a mix of meyer lemons, pink grapefruit, and sweet and sour kumquats, all organic and from L'Hoste Citrus Farm in Plaquemines Parrish, South Louisiana. Theirs is the best citrus in the whole world as far as I am concerned. I am just totally smitten with the resulting marmalade, which is not such good news for me. Marmalade is the most difficult of all fruit preserves to make when made in the hand-crafted manner. First we cut all the citrus by hand. For the grapefruit and the meyer lemons, we peel the fruit, julienne the peel, and supreme the citrus. Then we tied all the membranes left over from supreming in a piece of cheesecloth and threw them in the pot with the citrus. After cooking the citrus for about 30 minutes, I squeeze the cheesecloth of membranes to extract the their pectin, which I then add to the pot of marmalade with sugar and cook it to the gel point, that magical point where the marmalade will firm up to a semi-solid state when it cools.
I cook the marmalade (and all of my fruit preserves) in very small batches - yielding only 6 or 7 eight ounce jars. This and the fact that I use a traditional French copper kettle jamming pot, which has a very wide rim, helps the liquid to quickly evaporate and the flavor and color of the preserves to remain fresh and vibrant.
We made only a very small amount. Only 20 jars of marmalade and another 20 of honeyed-vanilla kumquats so get them while they last.
Leave a comment