ORANGES & LEMONS say the bells of St. Clement's

with recipes for preserving both

Sicilian orange salad: a surprising combination of oranges, black olives & anchovies

IT’S a dull time of year, these gray late February days on the shores of the North Atlantic when a hint of spring has yet to arrive, the air is still frigid, the earth is covered with gritty old snow, and a leaden sky lowers over all. That’s why nature gives us citrus: nothing brightens the spirits of a midwinter kitchen quite so much as lemons and oranges, brilliant colors and flavors that simply sing of better times. Take a lemon, scratch a bit of rind with your thumb nail, and the penetrating fragrance will lift your winter-ravaged heart. 

Sicilian blood oranges. Lemons on the island of Crete

Yes, it’s true, there are oranges and lemons in my supermarket every day of the year, but I still think of citrus as a midwinter treat. It comes from years of living in and around the Mediterranean where the first oranges, still mostly green, used to show up in Beirut market stalls in early December and we rushed to fill our satchels with fresh fruits, knowing the season would last, if we were lucky, into March but not much beyond.

Later, living in Italy, there were lemons from Amalfi and Sorrento, grown on steep terraces above the sea and still the most fragrant lemons in the world, and blood oranges from Sicily (moro, tarocco, sanguinello are their melodious names), produced on volcanic slopes below Etna, with their dark red flesh and tart-sweet juice. John McPhee once wrote: “Blood oranges grow well in Florida but they frighten American women,” a statement that probably tells you less about blood oranges than it does about the just-pre-second-wave-feminist time (1962) in which McPhee was writing. And by the way, if you want to know more than you ever though possible to know about oranges, you should read McPhee’s little book called, with admirable simplicity Oranges.

Orange juice (and pomegranate) on the street in Istanbul

On sunny winter mornings in Rome, we’d often start the day with a glass of freshly squeezed spremuta d’arancia at a sidewalk café in Piazza Navona, along with a cappuccino and the day’s Herald-Tribune—true bliss, but in another lifetime. Curiously enough, that habit of a breakfast glass of orange juice seems to be strictly North American; Romans themselves glanced at us with suspicion as we sipped our o.j.

Moroccan salted lemons, first stage

Back in America, this is the time to make North African salt-preserved lemons. They won’t give you an immediate boost—they have to sit in their salt brine for a good three weeks before they’ll be ready to use—but while you wait, you can dream about those North African dishes that benefit from a piece of chopped rind thrown into the mixture. My favorite is a braised chicken dish from Morocco called djaj m’qalli (djaj is chicken but I don’t know what m’qalli means—perhaps someone could enlighten me?), traditionally cooked in a tagine but easy to make in a covered black-iron skillet, my favorite tool in the kitchen.

Moroccan chicken with salted lemons & black olives

Djaj m’qalli is simple to put together—you just brown chicken thighs and plenty of onions, add aromatics and stock, and braise in the oven for under an hour. But plain old chicken & onions puts on elegance with an array of exotic flavors that perfumes the kitchen as the chicken bakes, including saffron, ginger, cumin, turmeric, and coriander, plus the chopped rind of those lemons, a handful of black olives, and at the end a thick sprinkle of chopped fresh cilantro and parsley. The color contrast is stunning—brilliant lemons, deep dark olives, fresh greens on top—and the fragrance is compelling when it comes to the table and you lift the lid.

But first, make the salted lemons

Most lemons, even organic ones, are covered with food grade wax to keep them from shriveling during their long journeys to market. Even though it’s certified safe for consumption, I think it’s a wise idea to get rid of that stuff before brining them.

So how do you get the wax off? Easy: Bring a pot of water to a boil. Dip a lemon in and hold it under boiling water for not more than a minute, then pull it out with a slotted spoon and immediately, before it cools down, dry it, rubbing it roughly with paper towels. I won’t guarantee that this gets all the wax off, but it will get enough so that any remainder won’t be bothersome. (Of course, if you have a lemon tree in your back yard, you don’t need to bother with this—just rinse the dust.)

You’ll need 6 to 8 organically grown lemons, and another 6 to 8 lemons that don’t have to be organic (but it’s always a good idea to use organic when you can), plus about 2 cups of sea salt or plain un-iodized (kosher) salt for pickling. You’ll also need a half-gallon (2 quarts, 4 pints, 8 cups, whatever) glass canning jar, with a wide mouth. Stand the glass jar on a wooden board or a folded dishtowel to keep it from cracking and fill it with boiling water. Do this on a counter next to the sink so it’s easier to turn the water out when you’re ready to fill the jar with lemons.

Put the salt in a wide bowl. You probably won’t need to use all of it but that doesn’t matter. Now take a lemon and using a sharp knife, cut a slit beginning at the bud end and going down to the stem end but do not cut all the way through. Stop about a half inch from the stem end. Then turn the lemon and slit again to make a cross that is still attached at the stem end. Open the lemon slightly and pack the insides with salt, then press the lemon down in the bottom of the jar (which you have first emptied of water, natch). Do this with each lemon, pressing very firmly (I use a wide wooden spoon for this) so that they yield a considerable amount of juice. Fill the jar up to the top. If you have 8 good-sized lemons, they should fit comfortably in the jar. Add about ¼ to 1/3 cup of salt.

If not enough juice has been released to cover all the lemons completely, squeeze more fresh lemon juice to top it up. Add another couple of tablespoons of salt to the top of the jar and screw the lid on tight.

Set the jar aside to ferment and pickle for at least three weeks, although the lemons will last a good deal longer. (I’ve kept them up to a year in the refrigerator and they just keep getting better.) Every couple of days turn the jar upside down and leave it standing on its head for another couple of days, then right it again. This keeps the salt mixing well throughout.

To use, extract a lemon, discarding the fleshy bits, and use the soft rind, chopping or slicing it, depending on the recipe. If you only need half a lemon, return the other half to the jar to continue its work.

There’s a vogue lately for using thin-skinned, sweet Meyer lemons (actually a cross between lemons and mandarin oranges) for this but I prefer regular lemons. The thicker, sturdier rind adapts much better to all the traditional uses, including pickling, and the sharper, more acidic flavor shows up better for pickling. Americans swoon over sweet Meyers but our common Eureka or Lisbon lemons, the kind available in every produce market, are much closer to the lemons available in the Mediterranean.

And then there are oranges:

Orange marmalades on a snowy day

The last time I made marmalade, the whole house filled with the most intense citrus aromas as I simmered and stirred and tested and retested. The result was five jars of a clear, brilliant yellow-orange marmalade made with white sugar, and then eight jars of an astonishingly tasty recipe from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook, by master jam maker Pam Corbin. That marmalade is cooked for two hours before demerara sugar is stirred in. This pale brown, unrefined sugar gives a wonderful deep color and dark, complex flavor to the jam.

For good marmalade, bitter oranges, aka Seville oranges, aka sour oranges are best. You can find them in season at upscale markets or on line but they are not cheap. In fact, I’ve had it on good authority that oranges are among the food products most affected by inflation, a lot of it owing to weather problems. One source I’ve used is http://www.melissas.com. They were good to deal with, working hard to expedite oranges from sunny California to the frozen depths of coastal Maine.

Pam Corbin’s River Cottage recipe is easy, if time-consuming, but ALL marmalade making is time-consuming. You’ll need 2 pounds of oranges (that’s about 8 bitter oranges which are rather small), plus about 3 pounds (10 cups) of Demerara sugar, the juice of a lemon, and, if you wish, about a quarter-cup of whisky (traditional) or armagnac (which I used because I didn’t have any whisky).

Scrub the oranges well with soap and water before using them, even if they’re certified organic—you never know what they may have picked up on their way to you. Squeeze out all the orange juice and set it aside. Don’t discard the seeds—that’s where all the pectin is and you need it to set the marmalade. Wrap the seeds and any pulp that comes with them in a square of clean muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth and tie with twine to make a little sack. Now, take the peels, pith and all, and sliver or chunk them. (Don’t make the chunks too big because they’re hard to spread on toast.) Put everything into a big bowl—the cut peels, the seed bag, and the orange juice—and add about 2 quarts of cool water. Set aside, covered, and leave to soak overnight.

Next day transfer it all to a large stainless steel saucepan and bring to a simmer. Partially cover and simmer very slowly for a good two hours, or until the bits of peel are tender and the liquid has reduced by a third to a half. At this point, take out the bag of seeds and discard it, after squeezing it to add more juice to the pan.

A candy thermometer is useful but if you don’t have one, put a saucer in the freezer to chill and use for testing.

Stir the sugar and lemon juice into the pan of oranges, set over low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then raise the heat slightly and cook at a rolling boil for about 25 or 30 minutes—until the jam has reached 220º F (104º C); or test by dropping a little spoonful of marmalade on the chilled saucer. If it firms up quickly, it’s done. You can also test by holding up spoonfuls of jam over the pot. If it sheets, rather than drips, back into the pot, the jam is done. Take the pot off the heat and cool down for about 10 minutes, then stir in the booze if you’re using it.

Transfer the marmalade to sterile jars and seal immediately. When the jar lids make that nice “ping” sound, you’ll know they’re sealed tightly.

The other recipe, the one that made a lighter colored jam with a more present flavor of citrus began with instructions in the New Doubleday Cookbook, a wonderful book that was compiled years ago by my friend Jean Anderson, who just died a few weeks ago. She was a wonderful writer because she had a deeply studied understanding of cooking and all the processes it involves—so different from a lot of the hot-shot, on-line, cooking “experts” I run into when I’m not looking. I confess I turn to Jean’s book the way some people turn to the Joy of Cooking, for authoritative advice about all the pieces of kitchen information that are sometimes hard to keep in one’s own head. Here’s my version of the recipe:

Again, scrub 2 pounds of oranges with soap and water before using. Juice and seed them, just as you did with the earlier recipe. Set the juice aside and put the seeds and any bits of flesh in a separate small bowl. Now, take the empty rinds and, using a serrated grapefruit spoon, scrape away the insides. Include as much as you can of the white pith, leaving a shell not more than ¼ inch thick (a good deal easier than it sounds). Add the scraped pith to the seeds in the bowl. Sliver or chunk the peel.

Combine the slivered peel with the juice in a stainless steel saucepan or kettle and add 2 cups of cool water. Wrap the seeds and the pith in a muslin or cheesecloth bag, as described above, and immerse the bag in the saucepan. Set over medium-low heat, bring to a simmer, and simmer gently, covered, for 30 minutes, then remove from the heat and set aside overnight.

Next day, discard the seed bag. Measure the stuff in the pan and add water if necessary to make 4 cups. Then for each cup add a cup of regular white sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for another 30 to 40 minutes, or until the jam is ready—as described above, when the temperature gets up to 220 to 240ºF (104º C) or the jam sheets off the side of the spoon.

Put in sterile jars and seal, as described above.

You’ll note that this contains a good deal less sugar than the earlier recipe and yet it’s sweeter, less bitter. Why? I can only think it’s the difference between the two sugars, with demerara adding more complex flavors. Which do I prefer? Impossible to say—they both have considerable virtues.

Does marmalade need further processing? I don’t think so. The combination of sugar and acid should be sufficient to preserve it for a very long time. But I can guarantee that it will be entirely consumed long before you have to think about that.