Brighten up breakfast

Press, 5 August 1981, Page 14

Brighten up breakfast

Alison Holst’s

Food Facts

I enjoy the . tartness of marmalade at breakfast time. Marmalade made from limes has a definite lime flavour and is more tart than most other marmalades.

Until a few years ago I used to buy the odd jar of lime marmalade to vary our breakfast menu, but as the price of my favourite lime marmalade rose dramatically I decided to make my own instead. Since then I have tried various recipes and methods. I have found that I.don’t like limes minced, blended or food processed for this marmalade, although I find these quick methods perfectly satisfactory for grapefruit marmalade.' Lime marmalade seems nicest when -the fruit is shredddd paper thin. Just before the marmalade has finished cooking J.scoop out about half the peel with a sieve, so that the marmalade is jelly-like with some peel set in the jelly, but it is not full of slices of peel, tender though they may be.

Lime marmalade, like other marmalades, is best made from fairly immature fruit. It is hard to tell when the little Tahitian limes are immature, because they are lime green when ripe, but I like marmalade made from fruit bought in late June, July or early August, since this is the beginning of the lime picking season in North Auckland. Marmalade made with limes alone tends to be very acid, and weeps when cut — :so now I add a small amount of lemon and grapefruit.

l am aware that limes are not always available. My last

lime marmalade recipe used unsweetened lime juice to overcome this problem — but I soon found out that this is not easy to find either, so I’ve returned to fresh fruit recipes.

I hope you can get limes and that you enjoy the marmalade. At. this time of year it is good to have something different to brighten the breakfast table! , Slicing fruit is not very time consuming. In our house three of us sliced the limes for five to 10 minutes. If you can’t persuade anyone to help you, slice the fruit while you listen to, or watch a good programme.

Use a really sharp knife and a wooden board and you won’t find it takes long at all.

3 cups thinly sliced limes ’■2 cup thinly sliced lemons 'z cup thinly sliced grapefruit 12 cups water

9 cups sugar Use the same cup for measuring everything. If you use a metric cup (which holds 250 ml) you will need 650 to 700 g of limes to make three cups.

Shred the limes as thinly as possible.. Put. the ends of the fruit and the pips aside. Slice the lemon and grapev fruit very thinly, then put the sliced lemon, grapefruit and the uneven bits of lime into a piece of open-weave material. Tie the material so the fruit is enclosed in a .bag, leaving room for it to expand during cooking. Put the limes and the bag of fruit in a large container that will not be affected by the acid and add the water (cold, warm or hot). Leave to stand for 12 to 24 hours then boil the mixture until tender. The peel will disintegrate when squeezed gently after boiling. With immature fruit the boiling time should be 15 to 30 minutes. Remove the bag of fruit and squeeze it firmly to remove all the liquid possible.

If you do not have a large jam pan divide the juice and boil it in two or three smaller batches. (Small batches of marmalade cook more quickly and set faster than large batches.) Bring fruit stock to boil, add the sugar (or the propor-

tion of the sugar needed for the proportion of stock). Boil briskly, uncovered, so the mixture bubbles in the middle of the pan and froth can collect at the edge. As soon as the froth starts to look solid, start testing tablespoon lots of the marmalade. Put a tablespoonful on a clean dry saucer and put it by an open window. Leave one to two minutes, until cold, then run your finger over the surface. As soon as the surface of the marmalade forms wrinkles when you do this, stop boiling the mixture. If you

want to remove and discard some of the peel, do it just before you take the marmalade off the heat. (This takes any time between five and 30 minutes.) Pour the hot marmalade into clean heated jars. When cool enough to have a firm skin on top, pour melted wax (candle wax or paraffin wax) over the marmalade' tilting the jar so the wax sticks firmly to the clean dry glass just above the marmalade. Top with cellophane tops, or wait until cooler and top with screw tops which have been boiled then thoroughly dried.