by jodi ~ February 19, 2010
Seville oranges, halfway to being marmalade
Bitter. Oh, so bitter. Yet intensely fragrant. A fruit of perfect balance.
That’s the calling card of the Seville orange (Citrus aurantium), also known as the sour orange or bigarade. Its fleeting season, a scant few weeks in the dead of winter, makes this fruit’s appearance at markets a much-anticipated event.
With thick, pockmarked, and highly fragrant skin that blushes a deep red-orange with maturity and tart, bitter, and seedy pulp packed with pectin and Vitamin C, the Seville orange has become a favourite fruit for cooking down with sugar to make marmalade. Hie thee to the market. Get some before they’re gone.
About Seville Oranges
- Sour oranges flourish in subtropical climates and are hardy — they can stand short periods of frost; the oldest trees in Spain are said to be 600 years old
- The tree’s origins are believed to be in southeast Asia. Arabs carried the sour orange to Arabia in the 9th century; it is reported to have been found growing in Sicily by 1002 A.D. and cultivated in Seville, Spain, by the end of the 12th century
- Explorers brought the sour orange to the Americas, and it became a Floridian export crop by 1763
- Budwood of sweet orange was first grafted onto sour orange trees in the American south; subsequently the sour orange became more widely grown for rootstock than its fruit
- Today, sour orange orchards and groves are only common in areas where the plant’s special products have economic value: southern Europe, northern and tropical Africa, the Middle East, India, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and some regions of South America
- In Cuba the tree’s wood is used to make baseball bats
Culinary Uses of Seville Oranges
- Sour orange is a key ingredient in a drink called “Smoking Bishop,” mentioned in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (the fruit is boiled with cloves, red wine, sugar, and water)
- High vitamin C levels made it a good candidate for warding off scurvy; the bitter pulp was sprinkled with sugar to make the fruit edible for this purpose
- A popular way to eat the fruit in Mexico is halved, salted, and coated in chiles
- Essential oil from the dried peel of immature fruit is used to make liqueurs such as cointreau, grand marnier, and triple sec; oil from the peel is also used as flavouring in candy, baked goods, gum, soft drinks, and pharmaceuticals
- The tart juice of the sour orange is prized for its flavour in ades and for cooking fish (South America) and meat (Spain); in the Yucatán it is used like vinegar and in Egypt it is fermented to produce wine
- Sour orange is used most popularly in marmalade, with England and Scotland importing significant quantities of the fruit destined to be preserved this way (Seville orange marmalade recipes: BBC Good Food; Simply Recipes; David Lebovitz; Canadian Living)
(Sources: Purdue University Center for New Crops & Plant Products; Oxford Companion to Food; MontrealFood.com)
by jodi ~ February 12, 2010
Sweet corn soup shooters
Here’s the scene: People are arriving at your cocktail party on an icy January evening. The biting wind has driven the temperature down to a frigid –20°C. Guests unwind scarves from their necks, shake out their hair from the confines of toques, and sling their bulky long coats over the entryway banister before entering the dining area while blowing into their cupped hands for warmth.
Wine corks pop and the crowd begins to nibble from the trays of hors d’oeuvres arranged on the dining-room table. As host, this is your moment. From the adjoining kitchen, you uncover the golden liquid warming on the stove and ladle it into tiny cups arranged on a tray. (The perfumed steam unleashed in the process gets the attention of your guests; eyes turned expectantly in your direction.) You grate a sprinkling of cocoa-coloured nutmeg over the tops and carry the shots out to the party-goers.
The contents of the cups is warm and sweet. The colour and flavour are sunny, a reminder of the summer that lies beyond this menace of mid-winter. Heads tilt backwards as vessels are drained and gradually, it happens: the colour in people’s cheeks perks up and the room begins to glow. One by one guests drift into the kitchen, their arms outstretched towards you and your pot of soup.
They want more.
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by jodi ~ February 10, 2010
Tablecloth embroidered by my great-grandmother
I only remember her hands ravaged by age: skin thin and spotted, knuckles gnarled with arthritis. I can still see them working a crochet needle, kneading dough, and wiping the warm wax from the surface of a just-written pysanka. I thought about those hands and the woman they belonged to, my maternal great-grandmother, Eva, as I unfolded a tablecloth etched with her embroidery and and smoothed it over our dining-room table.
The stitching on the underside is nearly as neat as the pattern that faces up, all tidy knots and zigzags — the mark, they say, of a skilled needleworker. Where did she find the time to do such intricate work? At various times in her life she juggled being a farmer, housekeeper, restaurateur, and factory worker with raising children, keeping a house and garden, preserving and preparing food, supporting her church, and countless other tasks that women of her generation were expected to perform. I think about this life my great-grandmother lived and wonder how it is she found the time to create such delicate art amidst the other demands for her attention while I claim not to have time enough to sit at a table draped with it.
Here’s my dirty little secret: Despite owning a lovely art deco dining set passed down to me from my parents and my grandparents before them, and despite having in my closet a stack of neatly folded tablecloths given to me by my aunt — some originally belonged to my grandmother and great-grandmother — Michael and I rarely spread out those cloths and eat at the table.
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