Bittersweet

sevile orange jam, originally uploaded by kitschenette.

Last weekend Bruno and I made this fanastic jam - seville (bitter) orange and blood orange. It is just right - sour, sweet, tart, a trace of bitterness. We wanted to make a pure seville orange marmalade but do you know how much juice your average seville orange exudes? About 2 drops. So we squeezed out what we could, zested them all and made up the remaining amount with blood orange juice (also in season at the moment)- about 1L of juice. Oh, and the juice of half a lemon for good measure.
Then about 800g of jam sugar, bring to the boil and proceed as usual for jam-making.

Wonderful, wonderful. It's all I want on my toast in the morning. It's just a pity that we only made a few jars of it. In view of that, I just went and bought another 2kgs of seville oranges to jammify this weekend...

Comments

[sean]

damn, but that jam looks *good*. and just when i'm onto my last bottle of summer berry jam, too. i guess i'll be finding out this weekend if any of my local grocers sell seville oranges. i'll need to find some sort of juicing apparatus, too. but ahh, if it looks half as good as that pic...

[fethiye]

Oh lucky you that you got a hold of some seville oranges. I cannot find them in where I live, in northern Californita. I am used to its jam in a totally different fashion: http://www.yogurtland.com/2006/01/16/seville-orange-jam/

[kitschenette]

sean, you don't need any fancy pants juicer - any normal hand-held plastic contration will do! we got one from the brocki : ) at a pinch you could squeeze by hand...
if the next batch turns out ok I'll send you some!

[Luisa]

i'm soo envious - we don't get seville oranges here in nyc. your little pot there looks like it's filled with the most delicious orange jelly ever! lovely picture.

[Mandy]

That is my favorite color! I have a bad habit of eating anything that color, whether or not it's edible. Mmmm.

I first had a blood orange on the cobbled streets of Palermo, Sicily. That is a great zesty jam idea. How do you have time to cook, take care of wee ones, work, upload pics to your site, and make jams? Can we know your secret?

[kitschenette]

the secret...there is no secret! just not much sleep. I sacrifice sleep to take pictures and blog. It's worth it because it keeps me sane and fulfills my frustrated creative side : )

blood oranges are a delight. I first discovered them in sydney, where we would freeze the juice in ice-cube trays and then pour over shots of vodka. Delicious, with gorgeous colours to boot. I try to find the ones with a blush of vermillion on their cheeks, as they are more reliably to be the ones with the darkest flesh and juice, and the blood orange is so strikingly all about colour.

re. the availability of seville oranges: they aren't easily available here, either, but I keep an eye out for them (the season is very short) at the little local store which often has hard-to-get seasonal produce. They usually sit tucked away underneath the more common clementines and navals, but they are there. Ugly things they are, too, but wow, good stuff.