136: Cabbage Marmalade Toasts

So this may be a bit of a copout, as it's just a variation on that pizza I had for breakfast the other weekend. But last minute lunches are generally not well thought out.

I picked up some tangy sourdough from Amy's Bread (which I hadn't had in a while. It hits the spot well enough, though should really plan a trip back to SF for the real thing...and to visit my sister. I have priorities though haha), spread some anchovy paste on and toasted that a bit to hopefully get rid of the fishiness.

Once the bread was good and toasty, piled on my marmalade and topped with the chopped olives.

The verdict: ehhh. What went wrong? Despite the toasting, the anchovy paste made the whole thing very fishy. Next time I'll mix it with the marmalade to spread that flavor out a bit, and reheat the whole thing before topping. Maybe I'll throw the olives in there, too, to mellow those out as well.

120: Cabbage and Onion Marmalade Pizza (& Thyme Scrambled Eggs)

This is definitely not a summer dish. A lot of standing around over an oven. Of course it happened to collide with one of the muggier weekends we've had in a while, so it's a good thing I don't mind sweating in a kitchen...and that it turned out well.

I followed this recipe from the NY Times for the marmalade. Tried my hand at chopping up the cabbage, the second half of the head (to be used in another recipe) was more finely chopped than this. But it cooks for so long, I feel like the flavors were on, even if the texture wasn't quite there.

Next time I'll probably keep it going until everything actually melts down, but for my purposes this is great.

The pizza crust has been in my freezer for a bit (it's the same batch as I used for leftover Indian pizza), and as I hadn't thawed out any bread for labor day breakfast, I decided to pair pizza with my eggs.

The Times recipe talks about putting anchovies and olives on the pizza. I wasn't totally sold, as I only had my paste and olives tend to be too assertive for me to enjoy. I'm trying to expand my pallate a bit so I did a little experiment.

The top half of the pizza got a thin layer of anchovy paste, directly on the crust. Then the whole thing was topped with the marmalade. The olives got put on the right half of the pizza. The end result:  quadrants featuring all flavor variations. Make sense? Part of me wants to draw a diagram but hopefully I worded that well enough.

My favorite quadrant was with the olives and anchovy, followed by anchovy no olives. Not that the others were bad, but both of those toppings added a nice savory salty contrast to the sweet marmalade.

The scrambled eggs were just thyme, with a little salt and pepper. Breakfast of champs.

76: Lemon Marmalade Update

So I finally cracked open one of the jars of lemon marmalade. I still haven't finished the jar of jam I keep at work for oatmeal, but eh, this has enough sugar it'll last in the fridge for ages.

Tried a little on some cinnamon walnut bread my roommate had gotten on a whim from a local bakery. One with ricotta, one without. Which won?

Ricotta, obvs. Overall the rinds are definitely too tough- they needed to be cut much thinner than I was able to. Still good for oatmeal, I'm not sure if it's good enough to bring back to the place that gave me the lemons.

The thing that makes me happiest is that the consistency is spot on! I think all sugar may have been a bit too firm but the honey kept it nice. This is the first batch of marmalade I'd made in my big creuset, will have to do more. I'm thinking of getting a smaller dutch oven, which would be perfect for those one or two half-pint batches.

I'll let you know when I open the basil one. Will probably be another month or so though.

76: Honey Lemon (& Basil) Marmalade

I go through little obsessive spurts. It looks like I'm coming up on one for canning (again). Apologies (but not really) in advance. I'm thankful I didn't get a fruit share this year- it's an intensive hobby to get sucked into- but I did happen upon a free bag of lemons the other day, so I had to make something.

I came across this honey lemon marmalade recipe from food in jars, which I followed (halving it) with a little help from these tips. I sliced up the lemons- not as thin as I'd like, but it was late and I cut myself about a third of the way through. Acids and cuts do not mix, so with no gloves handy in my kitchen I just rushed through the rest. It'll just end up going in my oatmeal, and I'm not terribly picky about that kind of thing.

This is a whole fruit marmalade, so I let the lemons soak/macerate overnight in the fridge with the sugar and water. Waited to add the honey until I actually made the jam- it's mesquite from Trader Joes.

I used my huge creuset, which was lovely. Most other small batches I've made were in pots, which can take forever. If it looks like I'll be making a ton of these, I may just get a big stainless steel skillet to speed up the process. It'd been a while since I'd made marmalade, but I remembered most of the process and even noticed new little details as it thickened up. Geeky stuff.

Although the recipe said it would yield six pints, and halving it meant I should've ended up with six half-pints, I got three. Hm. I didn't measure out the lemons, just went with half the 14 mentioned in the recipe, so that could be part of it. But the consistency was good and it passed the nudge test so I don't terribly mind. To play with flavors a bit (and get a little of my CSA share in) I sliced up some amethyst basil and tossed it in one of the jars.

I've had some rough luck with herbs in jam (an insanely rosemary-y apricot jam springs to mind), but it's only one, so I'll have a nice comparison point in a month or two when I feel like opening these up.

So look for updates when that happens, though I'll try to use one relatively soon. If they were to really go to the end of the jam/marmalade queue you probably wouldn't get word on them until next year sometime :)