Report:Three-Lemon Marmalade, batch #2
Fruit is a bounty, and sometimes it's a burden. Since I got back from my Palm Springs citrus odyssey, I've felt guilty every time I walked thorugh the kitchen without stopping to roll up my sleeves. That's because I came home with a grocery bag full of foraged lemons, and they sat there on the counter demanding attention and threatening to throw a moldy tantrum if they didn't get it. How do I find myself into these situations?
What happened was that driving home, I kept seeing groves of oranges in the distance off the 210 freeway and all that citrus made me think of a little stand of lemon trees I'd once seen along a residential street in Upland. I needed to stretch my legs anyway, so I stopped.
What I hadn't noticed before is that some of those trees were growing orange lemons, just like the curiosities I bought at Mud Creek several weeks ago.
They were crying out for the chance to star in a new production of THREE-LEMON MARMALADE. I selected five or six pounds of the best and the brightest.
Then on Wednesday, I got Meyer lemons and sweet lemons at the Farmers Market, and that night stirred up a double batch of multi-lemon marm. With some trepidation, I threw in a tiny bit of the fearsome bergamot: a strip of zest about 3/4" wide and 2 inches long added halfway through the reducing and removed 3 or 4 minutes later. It thoroughly infused the whole double batch—six pounds of fruit—with a noticeable bergamot aroma. What an unbelievable fruit.
YIELD
6 lbs fruit yielded 8 pints marmalade
Reader Comments (1)
thank heavens i'm not the only one with a citrus problem. :)