Blood Orange Marmalade

Christine Ferber | Mes Confitures | Michigan State University Press, 2002 | Makes about 12 cups

When I first opened Christine Ferber’s Mes Confitures nearly a decade ago, I was rather surprised to find the book filled with rather fussy measures and seemingly overly precise instructions. After all, this was a cookbook written by a home cook from France, a country where an ability to summon something from nothing by playing fast and loose with pantry ingredients is considered a birthright, and making elegant menus materialize without doggedly obeying several recipes to the letter has long been lauded as art.

Yet this lovely little cookbook, with its uncharacteristic exactness, never fails to produce preserves of the purest flavors imaginable. It took only a single batch for me to appreciate Ferber’s less-than-lyrical wording, her unerringly precise amounts, and her knack for selecting substance over style—all of which ensure that my inevitable kitchen epiphanies were as memorable as hers. Clearly, this is an author who knows her audience, perhaps better than they know themselves.

The recipes I’m drawn to time and again? Those, like this blood orange marmalade, whose ingredients have a fleeting season and challenge me to extend the ephemeral. Thankfully, in this book I have not just a willing but an able accomplice.—Renee Schettler Rossi

convert Ingredients
1 3/4 pounds Granny Smith apples, preferably organic, unpeeled
4 1/8 cups water
2 3/4 pounds blood oranges, preferably organic, or 17 ounces blood orange juice
5 2/3 cups sugar
2 navel oranges, preferably organic
Juice of 1 small lemon

Method
Day One
1. Rinse the apples under cool running water. Remove the stems and cut the apples into quarters without peeling them.

2. Place the apples in a preserving pan or other large, wide pot and cover with 3 1/4 cups of the water. Bring to a full boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 30 minutes. The apples should be soft.

3. Collect the juice by straining the apple mixture into a large bowl, lightly pressing  on the apples with the back of a skimmer or a spoon. Discard the solids.

4. Filter the juice a second time by pouring it through cheesecloth that was wet under cool running water and wrung out, letting the juice run freely into a glass container. Refrigerate the juice overnight.

Day Two
1. Measure 2 1/8 cups of the apple juice, leaving in the container the sediment that formed overnight. Discard the remaining juice and sediment.

2. Squeeze the blood oranges, saving any seeds, until you have 2 1/8 cups of juice. Place the seeds in a cheesecloth bag.

3. Rinse and scrub the navel oranges under cool running water. Slice the oranges into very thin rounds.

4. Place the sliced oranges in a preserving pan or other large, wide pot. Add 1 cup of sugar and the remaining 7/8 cup of water and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to medium and gently simmer until the slices are translucent.

5. Add the reserved apple juice, blood orange juice, the remaining 4 2/3 cups of sugar, the lemon juice, and the reserved orange seeds in cheesecloth. Bring to a boil, stirring gently. Skim any foam from the surface. Continue cooking on high heat, stirring constantly, for about 10 minutes. Skim again if need be. Remove the cheesecloth with the seeds. Return to a boil. Remove from the heat.

6. Immediately ladle the jam into hot, sterilized jars and seal.

Recipe ©2002 Christine Ferber . All rights reserved.
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