Preserving seasons through canning is not unlike preserving precious moments of our lives in our brains canning jar.
Fruits we preserve, like memories and moments we save in our heads, ought to be chosen with utmost care. Only the best preserved. The mediocre, best let go, allowed to fade, removed where possible, forgotten over time, even better never committed to memory.
Just as rotten fruit robs a jarful of preserve its goodness, so do a few low moments rob our lives of peace of mind. Robbing us respect for self, trust in fellow man, and worst of all, hope for the future.
As I began making Mandarin Marmalade with my darling cousin-in-law Smita, I was thrilled to be at the side of a person, who if humans could be preserved, is worthy of canonized canning. Hers is beauty not skin deep. It stems from a deep well of mindful caring, and seemingly ancestral respect for fellow man. Veneration for tradition and honored values.
Lucky me to have found a wonderful fellow jammer and beautiful Mandarin oranges from the gardens of three incredible women - Dr. Kavita Chaudhary, Smita and mom.
Mandarin oranges from three urban gardens filled up the sink nicely. Kamal and Smita were kept busy cleaning the mandarins at the sink for a while. Picking only the firmest and freshest.
At high temperatures, one exalts all the flavors present in a pan. Making it crucial to edit out those flavors not worthy of being extolled.
Similarly, to be happy and grounded, life calls upon us to let go of those feelings and emotions that make us less nimble. Those thoughts that bring us down, break our humanity, turn us negative, make us mentally feeble. Mental chatter that ought to be rejected by us as passing glitches. Best forgotten, and certainly not kept in our brain's exalted canning jar of memories.
To jam successfully, and navigate the journey of our lives, we need alacrity and confidence. The ability to make good judgment calls when picking fruits to preserve and when picking those rare fights.
One of my closest friends, and certainly my most revered fellow culinarian is Joyce Goldstein. She has penned 29 cookbooks. Each one uniquely brilliant and astoundingly relevant.
Her last, Jam Session, is her paean to canning and preserving.
I am always shocking people by how much and how often I can. Joyce is the same way, only with decades more of experience under her belt.
For years Joyce has enthralled me with her collection of jams and marmalades. Inspiring me as I make my own. Joyce's has been the loudest voice of the handful urging me to not ruin my hands preserving hundreds of pounds of citrus into marmalade annually. Concerned that my hand slicing the citrus into juliennes at best unsustainable and at worst damaging for my body.
She has shown through her experience of decades that it is possible to can citrus without hand slicing the peel into juliennes.Her marmalades are some of the favorites ever.
In my memory's kitchen, hand slicing has been held superlative. Everything else only a close second. I have been cussed about changing. I have not been open to even accepting an alternative that my own culinary muse has shown me and been using for longer than I have been an adult in this world.
With the daunting twosome that is Smita and my mother watching over me near 24/7, slicing citrus peel into juliennes was not an option. And finding someone trained by me, or in a professional kitchen that followed precise and exacting standards, was not an option I could exercise at the moment this marmalade was being made.
I was left with Smita, a ferocious guard dog my life had blessed me with, one I had grown to trust, adore, admire and appreciate, and respect deeply. I also know that he knife skills and those of Kamal, are far from what I would call able or skilled. They are perfectly well honed for creating marvelous foods, most soulfully prepared, and most welcomingly and loving shared. But to make precise fine juliennes that would look ephemeral as they were seen suspended in jelly, not a task I could imagine leaving to the twosome. I was in a conundrum.
And like always in my life, hurdles come with solutions. I need only be mindfully present in the moment. Not be frazzled or lost to worry and angst, tedium or fluff, and the answers that solve those hard times where recalcitrance, reticence, and repugnance overcome our minds and we are prone to jogtrot that leads us from effulgence to pigritude.
Just in that moment where enthusiasm for making marmalade could have turned to melancholy about all that was absent in life, Joyce spoke to me. With clarion brilliance. In my mind from our long past of shared memories and on the written page, through this book. She led me to Smita's still relatively new food processor, and assured me that I was at the right place at the right time.
Within 10 minutes, Smita and I had taken the washed and sorted Mandarin oranges and processed them into machine cut bits and bobs that were smelling incredible and had Smita all amazed by the speed. I could not be anything but be effervescent in glee as I watched the most innocent and appreciative look of amazement at our jam making session in Smita's body and facial expression. Joyce had finally won me over. I was sure we were at the right turn, at the right moment, on the road that is the journey of my life. Thanks Joyce!
We soaked the processed mandarin rind and pulp in water just enough to comfortably cover all of it. Cooked the contents of the pot on a low simmer at first, then full simmer till it came to a boil, then simmering for 40 minutes, or until the liquid was about a third lower than when we started and the rind tender enough without being mushy. We let the pan rest overnight.
I put 2 cups of sugar for every 3 cups of citrus that had rested overnight. Just because lore, legend, tradition and Joyce say so we had the sugar and citrus rest overnight and get familiar with each other. Even Joyce agrees that this step can be eliminated if patience is not your virtue, or if time is creating a hurdle.
And it seemed nature too was in a marmalade mood, sending forth a gorgeous reddish-orange hibiscus as its first Jamaica of the season. Some things are ordained by some power. A power we can name and call, or not, but we do have to come to appreciate in some way, shape, form, or in questions, as things happen that man and science just cannot seem to answer or explain.
Having never processed marmalade by machine, I was remiss in not halving the mandarins, and removing their seeds. At which point, it might have been just as easy making Chinese Mandarin marmalade the old fashioned way by hand. Hours were spent by patient and dutiful, kind and generous, always loving Smita, in removing pips from the pan. Hours.
Again we begin with a low flame, to bring the sugar pith and pulp of the mandarin to a nice warmth, before bringing the contents of the pan to a boil, and then a gentle boil, to cook the contents of the pan to 215˚-218˚F. More than 220˚F and you will have leather and not a marmalade/jam. And once at 215˚F, it must be watched very carefully as it can go from perfectly jammy to perfect leather in the split of a second.
Of course Smita was diligently removing any pips she saw throughout the cooking and stirring in the pot.
Truth be told, I really really really REALLY missed my Mauviel jam pots. They change the entire mood when preparing jams. Their size, their majesty and their own old cultural lore and legend, give the process a most beautiful blessing, that cannot be quantified by words or ample gratitude.
Whilst I have learned with experience about how long to cook a jam or marmalade, it helps to have a candy thermometer. I was very impressed by Smita as I watched her get cues from the jam, as to how it was changing in form. The thickness of it, the weight of it, as it lost water, and got heavier as a whole, not just in different parts of the pan, told her that things were changing. Mindfulness pays for in life and in jamming. Being present in the present, might be the toughest task in life, but pays of with huge dividends.
With sterilized jars and lids in very clean trays ready at stove side, with a sterilized canning funnel, and a sterilized ladle in hand, Smita poured the jam into the jars. Each then wiped around the top and rim. Lidded.
Once lidded and checked for tight closing the jars are ready for their 10 minute water bath/massage in rigorously boiling water in the graniteware processing pan.
After their 10 minute water bath/massage in rigorously boiling water, the jam jars (marmalade) are ready for their overnight rest on a counter top, without being touched or moved. Patience must be shown again. If one wants to hang around them and rest some, you will hear them pinging, a sign that they have sealed and are perfectly ready to be stored and put away. For a couple of years without them going bad.
The morning after, you can wipe the outside of the jars clean, test each one for seal, and stack them away on top of each other, in a cool spot in your home, or in the basement, where they can rest and be themselves. Jarred jewels that are beautifully preserving the bounty of seasons as they happen around you. Jewels that you can savor at your table and share with loved ones, or take as hostess gifts.
Preserving/canning is a virtue that I wish all would persevere and patiently learn and make their hobby. It not only preserves the best that nature puts forth in gardens and orchards and also backyards in urban jungles like New Delhi, but also teaches us how to be one with life, be mindfully present, and to learn about what to preserve and hold onto, and what to let go.
If we only preserve and hold on to the best, we have fewer chances of tasting that which is bitter, or be afraid of that which we worry might hurt.
Wonderful to read your blog again Suvir. I admire your fortitude in regard to jamming. David Lebovitz posted a lemon marmalade recipe recently. It suits my patience issues. 😜
Posted by: David Hicks | Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 01:30 AM
Thanks David!
As long as you make marmalade, it doesn’t matter how you make it.
Posted by: Suvir | Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 02:36 AM