Bartimaeus

In my photos of the Dundee tapestry exhibition I didn’t include the Sports theme, not being hugely into sports and team games due to a lack of coordination. My parents loved watching football though. I also remember babysitting as a teenager and the boy in my charge was an avid fan of Dundee United, an unusual choice for someone brought up in the Northeast where popular football teams to support might be Elgin City, Buckie Thistle or Keith FC, locally or in the Premier League Aberdeen was popular. My young charge schooled me in the home grounds and strip colours of all the Scottish Premier league teams. Dundee United wore orange and black. 

When I was back in Edinburgh I remembered that I was nearly out of marmalade. Shane said he hadn’t  seen the Seville marmalade oranges in the shop where I had bought them last year and I realised I had let the time drift and it was late in the season. I tried another local fresh provisions shop. They said they’d had several boxes but that they all sold out a couple of weeks ago. I went to another greengrocer and found a box of what looked the right kind but unlabelled. Inside the box a piece of slightly crumpled paper, tucked under some of the oranges, said in Spanish and small print that they were organic oranges of Seville. A few were mouldy. No doubt the lack of clear signage meant they had few takers. There were plenty of good ones and I was helped by the young server who converted the metric weight on his scales to the imperial equivalent as my recipe was in an old book. 

I got them straight home and got them juiced. My food processor made short work of chopping the peel and pith to a mush and then I left it overnight to soak in two bowls fills to the brim. I needed a gallon of water. The next day I got it all on the boil. My mum always had a bag of the seeds hanging in there too.

The citrussy aroma soon filled the whole house. I added the sugar but it took a long time for the setting point to be reached. This time I didn’t forget it and let it get overdone but it still looks dark and vintage and tangy. 

I used the pot scrapings as an ingredient in an oriental sweet sauce with Quorn and peppers. Shane had recently defrosted the fridge and freezer and I noticed the Quorn bought a while back by Bryn was open and needed used up soon. It was a typical use up stuff and invent a recipe meal. Shane and I liked it but not sure Nye was wanting it again, but he did clear his plate. He enjoys the smell of the marmalade cooking, if not the taste.

The weather has been grey and close to zero. Making marmalade was good use of a dull cold weekend. It even snowed one day. A friend had got in touch and having recovered from a knee operation she gamely offered to take the bus to me that cold day. She arrived rather chilly but in good spirits and I quickly made a warm dinner. In the course of the conversation she mentioned having visited Seville. I asked what it was like. She told me it was normally warm and a beautiful city but that she had landed on an unusually cold and wet and windy week which had blown the oranges from the trees and they had got crushed on the roads making a slippery surface. It made for a colourful image. She had enjoyed the visit nonetheless.

I went out in a brief sunny spell a few days later with Shane to try to see some of the golden crocuses I had seen before but couldn’t find them. I noticed later pigeons eating crocus petals so perhaps they had eaten the ones I had noticed before. There were plenty purple ones and they were wide open sowing their bright orange pollen covered anthers. I remembered reading recently that saffron, once more expensive by weight than gold, was made from crocus pollen. I don’t know if it is only a particular kind of crocus, or these would be a precious harvest. Some golden daffodils were opening and I liked the ones with an orange mini trumpet.

As we walked back home it was getting very cold. I looked out for redwings, a winter treat, as we had seen them there recently but none today but a different flash I orange caught my eye. I went over to examine them. I didn’t know the plant from the berries but my app called it stinking iris. The leaf looked like iris but there was no offensive smell. They looked a little crushed.

The marmalade is stored and we have finished the last of last year’s and started this year’s. I thought I might be too late but it was perfect timing.