One of the joys of writing about something you love is "meeting" all these wonderful people around the world who feel the same. I was recently corresponding with a delightful gentleman called Lachlan Shackleton-Fergus from Australia who, in February, won a gold medal at The World Marmalade Awards in Cumbria, UK (http://www.marmaladeawards.com/). (With a name like that, you'd expect him to make great marmalade, and he does. We also think we might be related somehow. We Scots have to stick together.)
I was asking him what compelled him to start making his own--because it is a compulsion. He started making marmalade from Sicilian lemons growing on the island of Malta, where he lived at the time. He made hundreds of pounds of marmalade, and gave it away to the locals, who were not familiar with it. But he kept making it. And now he makes it and wins awards and sells it--alot of it. Check out his website: http://jbshackletons.com.au/
I was asking him what compelled him to start making his own--because it is a compulsion. He started making marmalade from Sicilian lemons growing on the island of Malta, where he lived at the time. He made hundreds of pounds of marmalade, and gave it away to the locals, who were not familiar with it. But he kept making it. And now he makes it and wins awards and sells it--alot of it. Check out his website: http://jbshackletons.com.au/
My best friend Jo was lucky enough to grow up with a mum who made her own, delicious Seville orange marmalade. But she grew up in England; I grew up in a rural part of New York State, where the only marmalade was Smucker's, and it got spread on the Easter ham. It wasn't anything to write about, that's for sure.
But in 1986 I was an undergraduate studying for a semester in London, and I took the overnight ferry from Holyhead (Wales) to Dun Laoghaire (Dublin, Ireland) for Spring Break. (I couldn't afford warmer Southern European destinations, and nobody wanted to go where it was cold and rainy, so I went by myself). I arrived at a B&B in the Dublin suburbs at dawn, and the kind landlady took one look at me, and said, "you go on up to your room, and I'll bring you a nice breakfast tray." The breakfast tray contained: a steaming pot of strong tea, homemade toasted bread, creamy and salty Irish butter and her own homemade marmalade. I will never forget how that meal made me feel--warm and looked after--and how the marmalade tasted: sour and sweet and slightly bitter. And it was so beautiful to look at.
Lachlan's description of eating marmalade as a student short on funds at Cambridge conjures up similiar images and feelings: "Marmalade, thickly spread on toast dripping with butter, browned on a three-pronged fork over a little room in front of the fire was a ritual."
Lachlan's description of eating marmalade as a student short on funds at Cambridge conjures up similiar images and feelings: "Marmalade, thickly spread on toast dripping with butter, browned on a three-pronged fork over a little room in front of the fire was a ritual."
In 1987, when I was able to spend one term at Oxford, I didn't have the sitting room with a fire or the three-pronged fork, but I made a beeline to the Frank Cooper Marmalade shop on the High Street and stocked up on the dark, thick-cut marmalade. I was addicted to it.
Back in the U.S. (Washington, DC, working at Washington National Cathedral) I tried to find a way to make my own homemade marmalade because I missed the taste of it. I tried making some from sweet navel oranges, but when my best friend Jo http://www.projectmarmalade.com/ came to visit, she took one taste and said, "What is THIS?"
When I moved to Boston in 1995, I found a place in Harvard Square that sold MaMade, which is Seville oranges and pectin in a can; just add sugar (http://www.amazon.com/Hartleys-Orange-Made-Thin-850g/dp/B000JL2KQ2), so I tried that. It was pretty close to the real thing, so I happily made another batch and then another. Then I got bored and decided to add some Glenmorangie single malt Scotch whisky. I sold it at a holiday fair for $10 a jar. I thought about making it and selling it commercially, but I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I kept my day job in publishing.
Now, I make it every winter, from grapefruit and sometimes kumquats, as they seem to taste the best. I use Nigella Lawson's easy pink grapefruit marmalade recipe http://low-cholesterol.food.com/recipe/pink-grapefruit-marmalade-195086 because I am very lazy. And I experiment, sometimes using all dark brown sugar, which I like because it makes the marmalade all dark and rich and treacly.
Maybe when I'm old I will have a dark green, enamel AGA stove http://www.agaliving.com/our-products/classic-aga-cookers.aspx in my kitchen and several cats, and I will "marmalade" all winter long and give jars away to the postman and to all my friends. Wait--that's kind of what I do now, except without the Aga and the cats. We're working on getting a cat, at least.
Please write and tell me why/how you started making your own marmalade?
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