Grandpa's chunky Seville orange marmalade

Something a bit different this time - my first attempt at making preserves. It's something I've been meaning to try for a while, but never got round too. I suppose that's what this blog is all about!

My mission started with the purchase of a most ginormous bag of sugar. 5kg,  to be precise. It was about as big as Megan, and she's a little pudding! In fact, you hear about babies being born 'smaller than a bag of sugar'. Well, at 9lb 4oz, she was!

The technique was surprisingly easy. For those of you who haven't made marmalade before... Basically, you boil the oranges for a couple of hours. When they are cool, you scoop out the soft middles and squeeze through a muslin to strain the juice.  Chop up the zest, then put into a large pan with the juice and cooking water.  Then boil rapidly for about 20 minutes until it's set.  Finally, pour into sterilised jam jars.

I was really pleased with my efforts, and the row of jars sitting on the windowsill is giving me delusions of being a domestic goddess! Did make one error... I halved the original recipe, then cooked it in 2 batches as i didn't have a big enough pan. Still boiled it for 20 minutes, but I think this was much too long. The marmalade has set like glue! I've googled 'overset jam' and apparently, adding boiling water will soften it. Ah well, all part of the learning curve, I suppose.

Haven't been put off though, and I love the idea of giving homemade preserves as presents. Perhaps not this batch, though!

Easy gluten free bread

'You'll need a food processor for this one. The rice flour gives the bread a different consistency to that which you would expect from a traditional loaf, but this is an essential recipe to have to hand if you are feeding friends or family members with gluten intolerance'

Rachel Allen, 'Bake', p115

Well, as I said, my Mum is trying out a gluten free diet so it was an ideal opportunity to try this recipe while we were staying last week. Finding the ingredients was the hardest part - we looked in 3 major supermarkets but couldn't find any of the special flours required. Eventually we found rice flour; potato flour; cornmeal and soya flour in Holland & Barrett. 

That just left xanthan gum. 'What the heck is that?', I wondered. I'd seen it on food labels, and aiways imagined it to be some nasty artificial additive. However, as Rachel says it can be found in health food stores, I thought it couldn't be too bad. A little research on Wikipedia needed... It is a 'polysaccharide secreted by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris'. Hmmm, sounds pleasant! It is produced from the fermentation of glucose; sucrose or lactose, grown in isopropyl alcohol and then ground to a fine powder. Xanthan  gum may contain traces of corn; soy or wheat so it's advisable to check the label carefully if you have allergies. Xanthan gum is often used to stabilise salad dressings and sauces; to improve the texture of ice cream and to bind toothpaste. Another use, as in this recipe, is to replace gluten in baking. It gives the dough a stickiness that gluten would otherwise provide. Oh, and we finally found it in Lakeland! 

It does seem a large initial outlay to make this bread. The flours and cornmeal were £1.89 for each 500g bag, the xanthan gum £4.49 for 100g. However, you only need small amounts of each - 225g rice flour; 25g potato flour; 50g cornmeal and 1 tsp xanthan gum. 

Making the bread was easy, basically just whizz together in a food processor. The dough is too wet to knead, so you simply pour it in to a tin; leave to rise and then bake. The taste and texture are, of course, very different to a traditional loaf and I can't say I'm a convert. However, if I was going gluten free I'd happily eat it.