Coffee & Oranges
Reading The Flavour Thesaurus last night
(dear Bloomsbury, please make a waterproof jacket, I read mine in the bath and
it is covered in damp thumbprints) I came across the 'Coffee and Orange' entry,
which included:
a) a reference to a Sicilian Orange &
Coffee Marmalade made by San Matteo, which led on to
b) a stonking recipe that involves studding
an orange with 44 coffee beans and drowning it in brandy.
So obviously I have to try both. The recipe is not even remotely a marmalade, but it is an orange preserve, so it's definitely a legitimate diversion.
So obviously I have to try both. The recipe is not even remotely a marmalade, but it is an orange preserve, so it's definitely a legitimate diversion.
But first, I have to find this orange and
coffee marmalade. It is made in Sicily on an organic farm ‘nestled between the
enchanting Gulf of Taormina and Mount Etna’ and the farmer uses wheat syrup
instead of sugar, which is interesting.
Finding the website is easy enough, but
then I fall at the first hurdle, as they ship from a warehouse in the Bronx and
don’t deliver to the UK, even though it's much nearer. No fair. So I send them
an email, which doesn't get me very far, as they don't know if it is available
here. So I may have to to get my friend in Boston to
order it and send it on, which is quite a lot of work for a jar of marmalade.
If anyone knows of a UK stockist, please do let me know.
Proof that everyone has something to say
about marmalade, No. 2:
Lunch with Juliet (see 9 Feb entry). Over
the course of a single meal, she told me the thing about orange being the
colour for 2012, and two more things about marmalade:
1) She’d had a conversation with a
colleague two days beforehand about whether it's true that only men like dark,
thick-cut marmalade. (Not true, I'm sure. But am delighted that people discuss
marmalade at work.)
2) That she’d once come home from work to
find her then husband admiring several batches of marmalade that he’d spent the
day making. He’d worked his way through several different varieties – thin-cut,
medium-cut, thick-cut, marmalade with whisky, etc - which would have been fine,
except that he was supposed to be working on a PhD and this was his way of
avoiding it. So marmalade can now add 'diversion tactic' to its list of fine
qualities.
This is why this blog is so easy. I say the
word ‘marmalade’ and people provide me with reams of unsolicited material, all
of it entertaining.
On that note, I’ll finish with two
assertions, in the hope that someone will write in, disgusted, outraged or
otherwise provoked.
1) As discussed above, only men like
thick-cut, dark marmalade - the sort that needs gouging out of the jar with a
strong spoon and has to be balanced in lumps on the toast.
2) Marmalade is fundamentally more interesting than jam. Discuss.
2) Marmalade is fundamentally more interesting than jam. Discuss.
Comments
And, re: making marmalade as way to procrastinate is also something I can relate to. I started making it in graduate school. Now I just make it to avoid doing housework.