The Marmalade Factory

I'm no longer a marmalade-making virgin! This weekend I made two batches and while it takes a lot longer than jam it's very satisfying and the results are absolutely delicious.

The window for making is quite narrow if you're going to use Seville oranges - and you should - as these rather bitter oranges are absolutely perfect for the very best breakfast experience! The Sevilles are in the shops now and tend to get snapped up quite quickly. I bought mine from a fruit and veg shop - I noticed Sainsbury's don't stock them - probably because they don't conform to the supermarket ideal of horrible, uniform, flawless, ersatz, plastic-looking orbs. The two kilos I bought were in all shapes and sizes and the skins were very gnarly looking. Wonderfully real!

When you cut them open (oops forgot to take a photo of that!) you'll notice immediately that they're full of pips - that's probably another reason the supermarkets don't like them  - but these plentiful pips are what give the pectin needed for a successful set.

On the radio recently someone was commenting that sales of marmalade have declined dramatically in the UK - and immediately this provoked a corrective backlash of people rushing out to buy some. As someone pointed out, hopefully the sales decline is down to more people making their own. If you haven't tried it give it a go - you'll enjoy the results for months to come.

>> Here's the foolproof recipe I followed

Clare F

Preserving green tomatoes

I've just experimented with green tomatoes preserved in olive oil - using some of Clare O's bounteous tomato harvest and Lina Negri's recipe. I only had a few tomatoes and as this is a first attempt I've only made one small jar - but it was very easy. You can find the recipe on our website.

Here are the tomatoes after their 30 seond boil - cut into pieces and put into a bowl under a weight (I used the olive oil bottle on top of a saucer) so the excess water comes out.

When I compared notes with Clare O I discovered that she uses a different recipe  - one Lina gave us first as a footnote to Clare's earlier piece on tomatoes. Clare says it's absolutely delicious. I'll need to wait a while to find out how mine taste. I think the key difference was that in Clare's version you add vinegar to the water you boil the tomatoes in whereas mine involved a separate vinegar and wine marination stage.  Also hers uses onion and mine just garlic and fresh oregano.

Anyway I can't wait to taste them. At MIAMI we are falling in love with all forms of preserved tomatoes. Clare offered me some Tomato and Chilli jam last night which was truly scrumptious. She 's also been busy making raspberry vinegar.

>> Green tomatoes under oil (and a recipe for under vinegar) on the website

>> The other Green tomato recipe from Lina can be found in the Comments after this article What to do with Green Tomatoes