Pomelo Marmalade

Wikipedia tells us that "marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water." The very statement suggests, no wait.. encourages, that any citrus fruit could be used as the added peel to a jam recipe. Say for example, a pomelo.

Why a pomelo? The fruit is very common to Chinese food festivals such as New Year's Day, the real one (Jan 23, 2012). I saw a pomelo recently and thought about what else one could do with a pomelo besides eating it like a grapefruit. I read a few grapefruit recipes and have cobbled this particular one together.

Here's how it would go down...

1 large pomelo

2 Meyer lemons

2 oranges (1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice)

2 c. water

4 c. granulated sugar

a pinch of Mexican saffron, optional (for color)

Some citrus peels have a high pectin content. This is what makes marmalade gel without added pectin.

1. Fill canner (or a very large pot) with water and bring it to a boil. Wash jars and lids. Put jars on a cookie sheet in the oven at 150 degrees until ready to use them. Put the lids in a bowl and cover with boiling water.

2. Wash fruits thoroughly.

3. Peel pomelo, lemons, and oranges with a sharp knife or vegetable peeler. Be sure to just remove the skin of the fruit, not the white pith. Julienne the pomelo, lemon, and orange rind into strips. 

4. Separate the fruit from the membrane and discard the membrane and seeds. Chop the fruit wedges into small pieces and put them into a heavy bottomed pot.

5. Simmer rind, chopped fruit, saffron, fruit juices and water over high heat for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Cover pot and let it cool overnight.

6. Next day, add sugar to pot and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir occassionally until the candy thermometer reads 215-220 degrees F. At 215 degrees F, the sugar syrup may be pulled into brittle threads between the fingers. I'm not sure why you'd want to test it this way since the sugar is very hot. At 220 degrees F, when a cool metal spoon is dipped into the syrup then raised, the syrup runs off in drops which merge to form a sheet. (Read more about the various boiling stages of sugar syrup).

7. Remove from heat. Skim foam off and ladle into sterilized half-pint canning jars, leaving 1/4" inch head space. Wipe rims, seal jars, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

8. Remove jars from water bath. Let cool for 12 hours. Label and store in a cool, dark place.

Makes 4 half-pint jars.

Apple Coffee Cake

This particular recipe ratio is one of Emeril's and it is a good coffee cake recipe when you use a baking pan that allows the cake to bake evenly. I didn't make the brown sugar glaze since the streusel (crumb) topping was enough. I also managed to not do the ratio in order, but the recipe seemed to be very forgiving on that note. I added the butter last because I forgot to add it to the flour earlier. You can use any variety of apple for this.  There is enough sugar to compensate for tart apples. Onto the recipe.

The cake:

2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 c. braeburn and ginger gold apples, peeled/cored/chopped
1 1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
1 c. plain whole milk yogurt (can substitute sour cream)
2 large eggs
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened (or melted, if you forget)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

Crumb topping:

1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into chunks
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Directions

1. In a food prep, pulse to combine dry ingredients (flour, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon) and butter.

2. Add to food prep: yogurt, eggs, and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined. 

3. Pour out into a bowl and stir in chopped apples. Or, add the apples to everything in the food prep and pulse a few times. I did the latter because the food prep is fun to use.

4. Pour cake mixture into prepared (buttered) pans. For this ghastly experiment, I used a loaf pan (didn't cook through in the allotted time) and a round ring pan.

5. For the crumb topping, combine all the crumb topping ingredients in a mini food prep and pulse until coarse crumbs form. Sprinkle on top of cake mixture evenly. If you like nuts, you can add a half cup of chopped nuts to this step.

Emeril's recipe calls for a 9" x 13" baking pan and a cooking time of 35-40 minutes.

I used an 8" round coffee cake pan which cooked evenly in 40 minutes. Since the crumb topping was browning faster than I liked for the 9" x 5" loaf pan, I turned the heat down to 325 degrees F and baked the loaf pan for an additional 20 minutes.

Reheat for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Kitchen Note: Subtitutions

Most substitutions that are of the same food category are pretty decent. For example, yogurt instead of sour cream or buttermilk, soured milk (regular milk + lemon juice) instead of buttermilk, low fat milk instead of whole milk, milk and butter instead of half and half, etc.

There are some substitutions of dissimilar categories that work pretty well, such as apple sauce, tofu, or yogurt in place of vegetable oil in baked desserts.

There is a substitution, however, for lemon juice which calls for an equal amount of vinegar. I'm sure that the type of vinegar used impacts the taste quite a lot. I tried a more mild tasting vinegar (apple cider vinegar) as a substitute and well, the eggplant dip which relies on lemon juice to marry the flavors of the eggplant and tahini together came out tasting terrible.

Note to future self: do not use vinegar in place of lemon juice when making baba ganoush. Ugh, what a disaster.