Now you all know how I hate waste and post-Christmas we are left with all the things that I bought just becuse they look pretty, such as the lovely tangerines, which I had displayed in the kitchen in a Ferrero Rocher style pyramid. The problem is that everyone’s gone now and frankly the tangerines are a wee bit past their best, so what do I do with them??
Marmalade of course! But let’s do something different and add a little aromatic spice, in this case I chose star anise.
This could just as easily be done with left-over clementines or satsumas, or of course oranges. Basically weight the fruit, when it is uncooked and then use double the amount of sugar – easy!
I used :
- Tangerines, plus one random lime that was also in the fruit bowl – mine weighed just under 500g
- 1kg jam sugar with pectin (as these don’t have many seeds in them, you can’t rely on the natural pectin). If you don’t have the sugar with pectin, use the juice of 1 lemon
- 1 to 2 star anise depending on how strong you like the flavour
Method
- Wash the fruit and remove any stalks and place in a saucepan, just cover them with cold water (should be about 2 pints) with the start anise
- Bring to the boil
- Reduce to a really low simmer and leave for about 1 1/2 hours until the skin of the fruit is really soft
- Leave to cool completely and remove the fruit, keeping the liquid
- Chop up finely according to taste – I like mine chunky – or maybe I’m just lazy…
- Put a small plate in the freezer so that you can check the marmalade to see if it’s set
- If there are any pips in the fruit, throw them back in the liquid and bring to the boil to get the maximum pectin out of them, then remove them with a slotted spoon.
- Remove the star anise
- Add all the lovely chopped fruit and bring to the boil
- Add the sugar and reduce the heat, stirring gently until it has all dissolved.
- Now bring the mixture to a “rolling boil” – this means a really good, rollicking boil not just a gentle simmer – for about 20 minutes
- Check if it’s set, by placing a teaspoon of the mixture on the plate you’ve removed from the freezer -when you push it with your finger it should wrinkle
- Give it a good stir and decant in to hot jam jars
This made 2 large jars and 1 and a bit small jars of marmalade which I think is the perfect amount – 2 to eat and 2 to give away.
The Bombay Boys 