Marmalade, glorious marmalade!

Shredded Seville Orange Peel

I am admittedly a bit of a marmalade lover. And while, I love meyer lemons, blood oranges and the like, my one true love is the Seville Orange. I can get well and truly absorbed by the process of making marmalade. It is not something one does quickly. There is a process, a cadence to making a truly wonderful marmalade and I get excited in January as marmalade season approaches. I sharpen my knives, get my cheese cloth ready and sit and wait til I hear from my suppliers that Sevilles have arrived. 

And then me and my team all get into the marmalade rhythm. We embrace the blisters one gets from hand shredding the peel and we bask in the citrus smell coming from the kettles as it takes it's time to simmer down to perfection.

Seville Oranges have ARRIVED. I have seen them on the shelves is stores across the city ranging in price from $2.49/lb to $2.99/lb up from last years price of $1.99/lb. If you want to make lots of marmalade consider asking the produce manager at your local store to bring it in by the case. The lovely produce manager at my local Coppa's is more than happy to do it. Currently a case is $75/box.

Here are some wonderful marmalade recipes (not all made with Seville's in case you don't share my love) to get you started.

Lime Cilantro Marmalade - this recipe was created for an entry into Mad for Marmalade. It ended up winning a 2nd place ribbon. I love this marmalade with fish tacos. It has a nice bright citrus flavour that compliments fish very well. P.S. I am judging the competition this year, so if you come be sure to say hi!

Seville Orange Marmalade - If Christine Ferber is the 'Queen of Jam', then the title of 'Queen of Marmalade' goes to Vivien Lloyd. She is passionate about marmalade and shares my same adoration for the Seville as I do. This is a great recipe which gives you a clear, beautiful marmalade flavour as a result

Blood Orange and Vanilla Marmalade - If you missed it Amy launched a preserving cookbook earlier this year called The Canning Kitchen. It focuses on simple and small batch.

The Canning Kitchen

It was a lovely surprise last Friday when a package arrived at my kitchen from Penguin Random House Canada. I immediately tore it open to find this lovely new preserving book inside by Amy Bronee, blogger and author of this lovely canning cookbook. Thank you Random House for thinking of me!

I had an upcoming preserving class at Le Dolci, so thought what better way to test drive a new cookbook than to use one of the recipes with my students. Asparagus are in season, so the Pickled Asparagus Spears Recipe seemed like the obvious choice.

It was a gorgeous Saturday morning and in the class we were going to make Strawberry Balsamic Jam and Pickled Asparagus.

We started off with the Pickled Asparagus for a couple of reasons. One because I love how pickling shows new preservers how simple the whole process can be and that it does not have to be a time consuming or labour intensive. I shared with the class a couple tips with making pickled asparagus.

1. I like to draw lines on my cutting board that show me the different lengths to cut items depending on my jar size. This makes the prep process so much easier.
2. I arrange my spears with tips pointing all in one direction in rows so that you can grab your product quickly and easily when it comes to filling the jars

The class was excited to hear that we were using a new recipe and instagram and tweets were being sent all throughout the class. We even got Amy engaged all the way from Victoria.

Before they knew it the Asparagus was in the jars with their spices and brine and were ready for the hot water bath. Amy's recipe has a nice little twist in that it uses fennel instead of some of the more popular combination of dill and mustard seeds. I imagine when the class opens their jars in the recommended 2-4 weeks that they will be thrilled with the flavour combination.

I look forward to trying a few of the other simple small batch recipes in this cookbook throughout the summer months. If you are interested in getting your hands on The Canning Kitchen the release date is June 9th, 2015 or you can pre-order it here.