Marmalade Days again

21 Jan Marmalade Days again

It’s zero degrees outside or just below and the sun is out. One of those beautiful winter’s days. The kitchen windows are steamed up but there’s enough of a clear edge along the left-hand side to see how crisp the ground is in the garden, a smattering of frost clinging here and there as if the plants that weren’t pruned back in late autumn had shaken their heads to shed tiny flecks of dandruff across the soil. The big agapanthus in the terracotta pot on the patio is looking sorry for itself, its waxy sheath-like leaves drooping down as if it’s trying to give itself a hug against the chill air, its DNA doubtless longing for the warmth of an African sun this time of year, wondering how on earth it landed here. I marvel that it seems to cling on, as if it knows that, with just a few degrees of warming maybe later in the day, it will revive.

The fly on the horizontal rail across the kitchen window, however, is a different matter. Deceased some time ago, I realise a little guiltily, that I’ve seen it before, many times in fact and on each occasion told myself I must clear it up only to forget almost immediately. I’ve no idea how long it’s been there but probably since late summer or early autumn when flies seem to think it’s a good plan to find somewhere warm before the nights draw in. I swallow my shame and contemplate the poor fly’s demise. Clearly, it was trying to get out again, mistaking glass for air and probably battering itself to a state of exhausted concussion. On its back, its limbs up in the air and shrivelled against its body, it must be gathering dust by now. A moment’s worry that it perhaps left a trail of tiny eggs around the house passes when I realise they’d have hatched by now and be swarming all over the place. A sigh of relief followed quickly by another prick of conscience. The window cleaner was here a couple of days ago and I wonder if he’s noticed as he cleans the outside and whether he’s been counting the months, asking himself if anyone ever cleans on the inside!! Well, now they do!

It’s that time of year again when there’s a lot of hanging about in the kitchen while the various stages of marmalade-making unfold their stately sequence. Can’t hurry them. Everything needs to be timed and measured. This is much less touchy-feely and approximate than my usual culinary efforts so I have to recruit my most ordered self for the task and stick to the script. I make a lot of marmalade, ideally enough to last the year provided I don’t give too much away, though I do a fair bit of that. It’s repetitive and a bit tyrannical making batch after batch in the short interlude in January when the Seville oranges come into the shops. But there’s comfort in the annual ritual and the stirring of memories when the fragrance of gently simmering oranges blossoms in the house, slips unseen up the stairs and hovers gleefully on the landing. Scent-memory. It feels like holding hands with my forbears, the generations of women who’ve toiled and worried over a hot pan of molten amber-gold. 

The time for loitering and taking in all the sights of this part of the house, spotting the marks and blemishes, the things overlooked or rarely observed, is the 15 minutes of fast action at the end of two hours of slow simmering when you can be off doing other things. But when you add the sugar and raise the heat you can’t leave the kitchen; it needs a constant eye. So, this is the time for casting around for things to fiddle and adjust: rearranging this and that on the worktop or moving them back again; wiping cupboard doors; easing splashes of limescale off the kettle and buffing up the chrome; emptying crumbs from the toaster. Just a little light tidying and reorganising to make the time pass, all the while listening to the grumble of the ‘rolling boil’, as my grandmother and mother described it, in the big pan on the cooker where a volcano of frothy deliciousness bubbles away. It’s a moment of transformation: three simple ingredients combine to make something extraordinary, a harmony of sweet and sharp, solid and liquid. 

Setting point. That’s the big thing, that’s the Eureka moment that’s sometimes elusive. And you don’t know straightaway. You can’t tell until it’s cooled down what the set is like: not too runny, not too stodgy, just right. I’m getting better after years of learning from my mistakes. This year, so far so good. Now for the toast and butter…