After making more marmalade for the January Can Jam and finding some jars from last year in the pantry, I’ve devised some ways to use it up in other recipes.  I don’t eat much jam on toast and BarBBQ Bill doesn’t care for it at all “straight”.

Make a dipping sauce for egg rolls or a glaze for poultry or pork.

Dump a jar of marmalade (I used the citrus marmalade with apricots, but orange works, too) into a small saucepan.  Fill the empty jar about 3/4 full with orange juice – dump that into the saucepan – then fill the empty jar about 3/4 full with chicken broth – and dump that into the saucepan.  Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.  Thicken it (if necessary) by mixing 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of orange juice in a small cup (this is about how much I use for a half-pint jar.  Cut the amount down if you’re using a smaller jar).  Add the cornstarch mixture to the sauce and return to a boil until it gets clear and thickens.

I added some juice from a jar of pickled ginger and a dash of soy sauce.  Chili paste works too if you want a little heat.  Or Dijon mustard or honey mustard.  Feel free to experiment!

Another favorite – make a marmalade quick bread.

Whisk the wet ingredients together:

• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup citrus juice (I usually use orange, but a little grapefruit and/or lemon and/or lime mixed with it works, too, depending on your marmalade flavor)
• 1/4 cup applesauce, unsweetened
• 1 cup (one 1/2 pint jar) marmalade

Sift together the dry ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

For some additional spice, I added 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon – I like orange and cinnamon together.  You can use anise, cardamom, cloves, ginger, or whatever sounds good with the marmalade flavor you’re using (adjust the 1/2 tablespoon measurement based on the spice you are using.  For instance, cloves can be a bit overpowering).  Or leave it out.

Add 1 cup of chopped nuts (I used walnuts) and, if you want, some zest from whatever type of citrus you have.  Stir that around so the nuts get coated with flour.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring just until everything is moistened.

Turn batter into a greased 9×5x3-inch loaf pan. Bake at 350° for about 1 hour, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.

You can also glaze the bread with more marmalade – take the loaf out of the pan and put it on a cookie sheet.  Spread about a 1/4 cup marmalade over the top and put it back in the oven for a minute or two, until it melts.

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This month’s ingredient for the Can Jam is…

Citrus!

Despite my fervent prayers to whoever is in charge of Fruit Ripening, my very locally grown oranges are not quite ready for picking (as you can see above).  I was really hoping citrus would be the February Flavor of the Month because, by then, my tree might look more like this:

And I can’t get too much more “local” than 12 inches to the right of my computer. On to Plan B – off to the store.

I was thinking about concocting some sort of sweet and sour sauce to use on chicken or duck anyway, so I decided I’d make Citrus Marmalade with Apricots from a recipe out of Madelaine Bullwinkel’s book, Gourmet Preserves Chez Madelaine.  It’s a traditional “two-day” marmalade, and I liked the idea of adding the apricots. The ingredients are pretty simple:

• 6 ounces dried apricots
• 1 thin-skinned pink grapefruit (1 pound)
• 1 lemon (1/4 pound)
• 1 medium navel orange (1/2 pound)
• Water
• 5 cups sugar

Day One:  Coarsely chop the apricots and reserve.

Scrub the citrus fruit and strip 15 pieces of peel from the grapefruit and lemon with a citrus stripper tool (I used a peeler and guess-timated at what 15 strips would look like).  Remove the rest of the peel (you don’t need it for this recipe) and thinly slice the fruit.

Cut the orange, peel and all,  into 8 pieces and finely chop in a food processor (I chopped mine by hand – I like marmalade a bit chunkier than most people).

Combine and measure the fruit slices, citrus peel strips, orange pieces and the apricots.  Add an equal amount of water (I had a quart of fruit, so I added a quart of water).  Place in a heavy non-reactive pan, cover and bring to a boil.

Uncover and simmer for 15 minutes.  Smells heavenly so far.

Cool the mixture to room temperature, cover and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Day Two:  Measure the marmalade mixture and reduce to five cups.  I had six, so I simmered the mixture for about 15 minutes.  Measure out (and have handy) the five cups of sugar.

Begin adding sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, bringing the mixture back to a boil after each addition.

Continue cooking until it reaches the jell point (8 degrees above boiling – I’m at 500′ elevation, so my jell point is 212° + 8° = 220°.)  This took about 10 minutes.  It always seems to get “stuck” at 218°, but it finally got to 220°.

Pour the marmalade into a 2 quart measure and let stand for 5-10 minutes.  Stir down the fruit pieces to suspend them in the marmalade.  That helps the “floating fruit syndrome”.

Pour into hot jars, leaving 1/4″ of headspace.  Apply lids, rings and process in a BWB for 10 minutes.  I got six half-pint jars and a wee bit extra in a 4 oz. jar.  I had a feeling I should have simmered it for just a few more minutes.

Sometimes marmalade takes a long time to set up, so I’m not too worried (yet).  If it doesn’t, I can always make more marmalade bread.  I’ll post that recipe later this week for all the jammers that now have a surplus of marmalade.

As a reward for reading through this very long post, I’m giving away one new copy of Gourmet Preserves Chez Madelaine (not the one in the photo, which has a number of fruit stained/splattered pages).  Leave a comment on this post telling me how many jars of citrusy goodness have been added to YOUR pantry this month!  Deadline is 11:59 pm (Eastern Time) on Friday, January 29.

And da winner is…

Daisy Mae!  Congratulations – enjoy the book.

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It’s cold.  I want comfort food.

In this house, comfort food doesn’t have to be pretty.  This isn’t.  But it does have to be warm, stick-to-your-ribs style delicious.  Sauerbraten fits that description.

Sauerbraten is definitely not a last-minute meal.  The meat has to marinate at least 2 or 3 days (mine went almost a week with no problem).  You can use beef for this, but we like venison better.  Lots better.

We’re going to prepare a roast from the front shoulder.  Since this muscle group gets a lot of use, it’s can be pretty tough.  It’s the perfect cut for sauerbraten.  If you don’t have venison, use a beef chuck or rump roast.

We’re going to tenderize this one.  It’s a thick cut, and that will help get the marinade down into the meat.  If you don’t have one of these fancy gizmos, you can use a metal skewer or a thin knife blade.

Here’s the ingredients for the marinade.  Our roast is a little over 3 pounds, so I’m going to make a bit more than I usually do.

• 1 large sweet onion, chopped (or sliced)
• 2 stalks of celery, sliced
• 2 small carrots, chopped
• 4 sprigs fresh Italian parsley, chopped
• 1-1/2 cups red wine vinegar
• 2-1/2 cups red wine (I used a pretty inexpensive Cabernet)
• 2 teaspoons celery salt
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons black peppercorns, cracked
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 4 whole cloves (or more)
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
• 1 bay leaf

Combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and mix well. In case you think it’s a typo, I’ve started leaving out the garlic from the marinade.  We decided the garlic gets a bit overpowering (we’re using fresh garlic from our garden, so that’s probably why).  If you want to add garlic, I’d use about 2-3 cloves.  Feel free to add or subtract whatever vegetables or seasonings you like (or don’t like).

Pour the marinade over the meat and put some vegetables under the meat, too.  Cover and refrigerate.  Use a non-reactive bowl (glass, stainless, etc.)  Some people like to use a large plastic bag.  That works fine, but put the bag into a bowl.  Trust me, you don’t want to clean bright purple marinade from every nook and cranny and vegetable drawer of your refrigerator.

If the meat is not quite submerged, that’s OK – it gets turned over every day.  This may look like a lot of liquid, but it ends up being made into the gravy.  And BarBBQ Bill loves LOTS of gravy.

Drain the meat and reserve the marinade.  Yep, the meat is purple.

Dredge in seasoned flour.

Use a large pot or casserole that can be used both on the stove and in the oven.  Fry a few strips of bacon. Remove the bacon and reserve.

Brown the meat in the bacon fat.

Once the meat is browned, add the reserved marinade and the bacon (or use the bacon for braised red cabbage as a side dish).  Cover and bake low and slow (about 3 hours at 250-300°).

It’s falling-off-the-bone tender.  Remove the meat and thicken the gravy.

Serve over spaetzle or noodles or mashed potatoes with a simple braised red cabbage on the side.

Comfort food at its finest.

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BarBBQ Bill requested cinnamon raisin bread.

Well, OK…but I don’t buy raisins because he says he doesn’t like them.  Now he wants them in his bread.  Go figure.

But I do have these.  Dried Balaton cherries from Cherry Republic (they claim they are the world headquarters for all things cherry, and I’m not going to argue).

Now I need a bread recipe – as always, my go-to site for bread recipes is King Arthur Flour.  I found a cinnamon raisin bread that sounded interesting, so I’m going to start with that.  I’m also going to cut their recipe in half to make just one loaf – I’ve learned to “try it and see if he likes it”.

In a saucepan or microwaveable bowl, heat 3/4 cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of butter until just hot (about 120° F).  Add a generous 1/2 cup of dried cherries (I chopped them), 1/2 cup of rolled oats (hey, this might be almost health food!), 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.  Stir it all together and let it cool.

In another bowl, mix 1/4 cup of warm water and 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar.  Add 1/2 tablespoon active dry yeast, and let it stand until you start to see bubbles forming (about 5 minutes).

When the milk/oat/cherry mixture has cooled down to about 80° F (lukewarm), combine it into the yeast mixture.  Start adding flour one cup at a time.  Here’s one cup of all-purpose flour mixed in.

Cup number two of flour is in there.  I used a cup of KAF’s white whole wheat flour (now it’s really healthy food

I measured out the last cup of all-purpose flour and added about a third of it.  Since the original recipe gave a “range” of flour amounts, that’s usually what I do.  I’ll take the rest of the cup and use as much as I need to add while I’m kneading the bread.

About eight minutes later and with an extra 1/3 cup of flour kneaded in, the dough is smooth and elastic.

Put the dough into a greased bowl (I used butter), flip it over so both sides are greased, cover with plastic, and let rise for about 1-1/2 to 2 hours until the dough is doubled.  These large measuring bowls are handy for that.  Just note the original amount and wait for it to double.  My kitchen was pretty cool today, so I let it rise a little bit more than two hours.

When it has doubled, punch the dough down and knead it a little bit on a lightly floured board.  Shape into a loaf and try to push any cherry bits back into the dough.  I hate burned fruit in the crust of my bread.  Place in a greased 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 inch loaf pan, cover it with plastic and let rise until doubled (another hour or so).

Again, my kitchen was cool, so I let it rise until the dome was above the rim of the pan.  It was more like 2 hours instead of a hour (and it should have gone longer – I think the whole loaf should have been above the pan rim.  How come hindsight is always 20/20?)

Pop the pan into a preheated 375° F oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.  I lowered the temperature by 25° because of the glass loaf pan.

I brushed mine with some melted butter and sprinkled on some demerara sugar.  It was too healthy – I had to add more sugar and butter.  We’re about halfway through baking here.  The top’s getting a bit brown, so I’m going to tent it with a bit of aluminum foil.

Mine took about 38 minutes to bake.  Tastes great toasted.  BarBBQ Bill was pleased!

Things to remember next time:

• Let the dough rise longer.  It’s a slow rise loaf so plan for the extra time.
• Could have used a bit more of the cherries.
• Don’t do the butter and sugar (and add some cinnamon to the top) until it’s partially baked.  I think that’s why it browned a bit too much.
• Keep experimenting.

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