Thursday, June 4, 2015

Kumquat Marmalade. Or, Chopping Tiny Fruit for Hours.

If you have a kumquat tree you will know that when they are in season the fruits will suddenly grow abundantly, seemingly all at once, and you will feel like some kind of giant harvesting tiny oranges one by one.  This was the case at A's dad's farm, which led to our first delicious round of marmalade.
All the kumquats!  Faded view of our hero, the serrated knife, is also in frame.
So delicious was this Kumquat Marmalade that when our local supermarket incorrectly priced them (in our favour) this weekend, we went home with 6 more bags of these tiny orange friends.  Cue more feeling-like-a-giant-cutting-things time and we now have 12 jars of the sweet jammy stuff.

The recipe we followed is here, with some tweaks / tips taken from here because David Levobitz is the jamming king; we added a couple of limes for taste and the little serrated knife is key - both for cutting through the tough-ish citrusy skin and poking the seeds out as you do.

We had so much fruit we started measuring in bowls instead of cups.  The recipe calls for 2 cups of sliced kumquats and we ended up with 5 bowls.  Multiply the sugar, prep time and boiling minutes accordingly i.e. we went to bed pretty late.
The finished product!  Extra delicious with a hard cheese.
As you might be able to tell, the making of marmalade coincided with us playing around with a pro camera for a week, so the photos for this post are a little fancier than normal.  Hope you enjoyed!

4 comments :

Kate said...

Ooh with hard cheese. Amazing!!

Lorna Diwa said...

You were my jammy inspiration! And cheese because, well, of course <3

Karen said...

I like spotting the subtle bokeh in these snaps! Time to 'upgrade' cameras? I know someone who can help you... :)

Lorna Diwa said...

... I still have my bargain memory card, thanx.

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