Bad Mama Marmalade

Fuck Bonne Maman, I've made some really hardcore, bitter marmalade. Much like my women, that is how I like my marmalade - bitter and hardcore.

For years I have wanted to make marmalade but have always managed to fail to do so. January would come and go along with the Seville oranges and I would habitually fail to make marmalade. About 15 years have passed like this. This year was different and quite by accident.

I was making orange juice from some oranges given to me by my brother who is house sitting in the north. I cut through one that looked different to all the rest and Voila! there it was - thick skin and pith, hardly any juice and crammed with pips. I licked it to be certain. Yep, it was disgusting. Bingo I had found them. Cos they are slightly smaller and have bobbly exteriors the tree was easy to locate when I went up to the house that afternoon. I picked about 3 kilos and went home tres happy

(I had actually come across them last year but had once again failed to do anything about it. I was at a pig killing and was wandering about the farm during one of the less interesting bits of the jumbobeanosausagemakingfest. I picked an orange off a tree, peeled it and had a good old bite. Then I spat it out. Immediately. I had bitten into a marmalade orange, much to the amusement of all the Ibicencos watching me. To them it is not a Seville orange, it is a pig orange, named thus cos it is so acrid they use it to rub on the intestines of the pig to disinfect them before they fill them with sausage meat. And that is all they use them for. They of course think we are totalmente loco for using them, but hey, what's new?)

Both my mother and Annie's mother make superlative bitter, hardcore marmalades (perhaps that is how they like their men too....but actually, come to think of it.....that is not a thought process I want to continue) so I made a mixture of both their recipes and came out with some damn nasty stuff even if i do say so myself. Bitter and hardcore. Olé.

RECIPE
1k orange
1 lemon
2ltrs water
2k sugar

• boil oranges in water till soft and some are deflated
• remove the oranges
• cut in half and scoop out the seeds and pulp
• put the seeds and pulp in muslin and reheat in the water for 30 mins
• remove seeds
• add heated sugar and chopped peel
• stir till fully dissolved
• turn up heat and boil till it gels when dripped onto a saucer.
• Remove from heat