Marmalade and dark chocolate tart

This recipe was born of necessity.

While recently reviewing a cookbook, I tried a recipe for Seville orange marmalade that, while extremely delicious, had the consistency of cement. (I suspect the recipe neglects to instruct followers to top up the water level after the oranges go through their first boil.)

Since it was clear that this marmalade ...
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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 ...
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English lavender in my Aunt Janice’s garden

There’s a magical moment that happens when making lavender limeade. It occurs after you have simmered together water, sugar, lavender blossoms, and lime zest to produce a floral-perfumed simple syrup. It happens after you have sliced a little hill of limes in half and divested them of their pulpy, tangy juice. It happens after you ...
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