Recipe: Mandarin Jam

And a pressure cooked bread and butter pudding to use it in.

What a gloomy week it has been. We had a little snow here – not enough to be interesting and it soon gave way to rain and more mud – the pathways around these parts are slick with it. I’ve tried to get out whenever the sun has broken through, but much of the time I have turned my back on the weather and managed to do a bit of preserving. This early part of the year is my favourite time to preserve. You aren’t battling with a too hot kitchen and  the seasonal citrus fruits are bright and fragrant – an antidote to the drear outside.

A few years ago I wrote a book called Citrus which gave me licence to cook, eat and write around this much beloved family of ingredients. I’ve never been able to work out which my favourite citrus fruit is – I love most of them, but high up there would be a particular kind of mandarin. This fruit has not had its seeds or sour notes bred out of it, but most importantly, it has a thin, highly fragrant and floral peel, without the bitter notes associated with the sweeter fleshed fruits. These are not year round sweet easy peelers. In the UK, they appear briefly in early winter as “green” mandarins; they are not ripe, so the juice is more acidic, which you can use it in place of lemon, lime or sour orange. Then they appear again in late winter, usually imported from Sicily or Spain. They also frequently have leaves attached - don’t throw these away, they are also very fragrant with stronger floral notes than the fruit and are wonderful for infusing with milk or sugar. I rarely see these in supermarkets, but decent greengrocers usually stock them and some of the International grocers get them quite randomly. I am always on the lookout!

Back to preserving – it is the norm to have been making marmalade with Seville oranges this time of year, but you can also use the blood oranges which are around and I like to make this following recipe too with the mandarins. It is more of a jam/marmalade hybrid (I’m thinking about this in terms of the British understanding of marmalade here) – it isn’t as bitter as an orange or lime marmalade. It will also work with clementines and other oranges, but the flavour will have more of the bitterness you associate with marmalade.

Why am I making jam and marmalade in the pressure cooker? Well, this method is the whole fruit method – traditionally made by boiling the fruit whole until you can easily pierce the skin with the handle end of a wooden spoon. This can take an hour or two – the pressure cooker reduces it to 10 minutes at pressure, plus the time it takes to reduce pressure, a bit longer if your oranges have particularly thick skin. You can use this method for marmalade and jam, or you can use it for any other recipe where you might want soft whole oranges – Claudia Roden’s Sephardic cake springs to mind (and a version appears in Modern Pressure Cooking as it can be baked in the pressure cooker too).

I’m not going to give you the exact amounts here for this jam as only you know how much you want to make; this is one of those recipes when you have use ratios. But for reference, I made my first batch this year with 5 mandarins, which weighed roughly 300g once boiled and which made 2 x ½ lb/225g jars.

Mandarin Jam

Xx mandarins, washed (I used 5)

Juice of 1 lemon

Preserving or granulated sugar (see method for the amount)

Put the mandarins in the base of your pressure cooker and add around 2cm water – they float in water so there’s not much point covering them, unless you want to weigh them down, but this isn’t necessary.

Close the lid and set over a high heat until your cooker is at pressure. Reduce the heat by enough to maintain the pressure, then set your timer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to drop pressure naturally.

Open your pressure cooker and check the skin of the fruit is tender. Strain and leave until they are cool enough to handle. Break open and remove any pips, along with any large, stringy bits of pith (usually a central core), then finely chop.

Measure the same amount of sugar by weight (not volume!) and put both in a saucepan or preserving pan (or back in your pressure cooker to save washing up if you are using a stove top) along with the lemon juice.

If you want to use the wrinkle test for the set of your jam, put a couple of saucers into your freezer. Slowly heat the fruit and sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Stir regularly to make sure it doesn’t catch on the bottom. Start testing for setting point after around 5 minutes or whenever you feel it is getting there – I feel I can usually tell.

You can test for setting point a few ways:

1.     Temperature. If you have a thermometer, bring up to 104-105.5C . I tend to go to the lower side of this.

2.     Saucer test.  Spoon a little of the jam onto a chilled saucer. If it wrinkles when you push it a finger through it, rather than running off, it is done.

3.     Wooden spoon test. Take a spoonful of the jam. Turn the spoon over a couple of times before holding it horizontally over the pan. If the jam sinks down below the spoon to a point without dropping off it is done.

4.     By eye and feel! I often feel as though I know jam is done by stirring – if you can draw a line through the jam you can often see from the the way it clings jelly-like to the base that it is done.

Once you are happy that your jam has reached setting point, decant into sterilised jars. You can sterilise by running through a hot cycle of a dishwasher, or by washing in hot soapy water and leaving to dry out in a low oven.

Seal down when completely cool.

Mandarin Jam Bread and Butter Pudding

And of course you can use it in any way you would normally use jam but here is one of my favourite quick puddings. I’m writing this recipe exactly as I made it - which is to say, small portions and using what I had available. You can double it easily as long you use a dish that fits in your pressure cooker, make individual ones in ramekins (not the smallest ones though, please!), use different kinds of bread (I do prefer sourdough as I like a bit of crunch), substitute some milk for cream, use different kind of dried fruit or none at all.

Butter for buttering, spreading and dotting

3 tbsp golden caster sugar or soft light brown sugar

zest of 1 mandarin or similar

2 large croissants, sliced crossways (like biscotti)

Mandarin jam, for spreading

3 tbsp raisins

1 egg

250ml whole milk or a combination of milk and cream

A few drops orange blossom water (optional)

Butter a small oven proof dish or bowl of around 15cm diameter. Mix 1 tbsp of the sugar with the mandarin zest and sprinkle this into the dish, making sure the base and sides are evenly covered - it will stick to the butter.

Spread the croissant slices with butter and jam. Arrange these in the dish, squashing them in together and sprinkling raisins as you go. Beat the egg and milk together with the remaining sugar and a pinch of salt. Add a few drops of orange blossom water if you like - be sparing as a little goes a long way.

Pour the mixture over the contents of the dish and press the croissants down to make sure they are thoroughly soaked through. Dot the top with more butter.

Cover with baking parchment - a sturdy rubber band is the best way to secure it. Put a couple of cm of water in the base of your pressure cooker and add a trivet. Place the dish on top and close the lid. Bring up to high pressure on a high heat, then reduce the heat to maintain the pressure and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally for at least 5 minutes. To crisp it up, you can put it under a grill for a few minutes. I didn’t and you can see the colour/texture I achieved in the pressure cooker.