Greek orange marmalade dessert

If you have ever been to Greece, you will have seen there are thousands of ‘wild’ orange trees lining the streets.

Orange trees in Athens. Pic: Andrew Gustar

I love walking through Athens in spring, when the trees let their delicious floral scent fill the air when it’s blossom time. When the fruit ripens, the trees are replete with juicy-looking oranges. 

But while you can pluck these oranges and take what you want for free, you’d be laughed out of town if you tried to snack on one, as the fruit is so bitter it’s a very unpleasant eating experience.

However, while you cannot eat these the normal way, many Greeks use this bitter fruit to make a sweet called ‘glyko tou koutaliou’. The addition of sugar and honey in a preserving process cuts through the bitterness to create a nice marmalade-type of dessert.

You can use normal oranges (such as navel oranges) but many people prefer the Seville or Asian oranges as otherwise the sweet can be, well, too sweet.

To make roughly 1 kilogram of this (approximately two average-sized mason jars):

You will need:

• Oranges (normal 'Navel' oranges from a shop or, if you have access to them, the free, bitter kind). You will need 8 to 10, depending on the size.
• 1kg of caster sugar (yes, I know it's a lot. Bear with me).
• 4-5 tablespoons of Thyme honey OR 3-4 tablespoons of lemon juice to taste.

How to:

• Wash the oranges well if they’re shop-bought, especially if they are waxy. It’s worth grating the outside layer a little, as it helps to unlock the zest.
• Put the oranges whole and unpeeled into a large pot and cover them completely with lots of water, then bring these to the boil. Let them stay on the boil for 5 to 10 minutes (depending on how hard the oranges were in the first place).
• Drain the water and leave the fruit to cool down, because once cooled, you can slice into thick wedges and, after removing the creamy white pith, throw the wedges into the pot again and cover with the sugar.
• Resist the temptation to add water. The aim is to reduce the sugar and juice of the oranges into a thick marmalade.
• Bring to the boil, keep on the boil for 10 minutes and remove to cool down. Cover and leave for a day.
• The next day, bring the sticky mixture back to the boil, testing to see if the mixture is too sweet or too bitter. If it is too bitter, add the honey; if too sweet, add a few tablespoons of lemon juice.
• Boil for 10 minutes and scoop into your mason jars.

Greeks often eat this as a little treat, for example when they come home from school and want a light treat, or instead of cake for dessert.

George’s family usually give us several jars of this to take back to the UK with us but, as we rarely eat this sort of thing it has been left lying in the fridge. And as we are getting ready to head back to Athens we need to make room for more.

So I cheated with ready-made shortcrust pastry (with a little baby to look after I’m all about saving time) and made it into a tart. I blind-baked the pastry base first for about 20 minutes on 160 (find out how to blind bake here), then added a jar of the glyko to fill it up to the top of the crust, then baked again for 30 minutes on 160 (I have a fan-assisted oven which gets very hot so I usually take the heat down a notch from most recipes).

Oh it ain't pretty but it tastes pretty darn great! 

Basically, with the marmalade being made by our family and the pastry coming out of a shop, the whole thing took hardly any time to prepare or bake, which is great when it comes to fitting in dessert-making around feeding and entertaining a five-month-old baby!

Now although it wasn't elegantly prepared (I'm sure you will make it look much better), it smelled so good that we became rather impatient. I suppose we could have left it to cool down completely but we are greedy and hungry so ate it when it was a decent temperature.

As the ‘marmalade’ that our family gave us was quite sweet, we topped it off with cool Greek yoghurt to cut through the sweetness, but if your pie is more bitter to the taste, some delicious honeycomb or vanilla ice-cream will do just nicely!

Pizza. With Fruit? It must be - Fruit Pizza

I am not a great fan of doing any unnecessary work in the kitchen. Most of us live extremely busy lives, balancing work, family and social events so the idea of having to slave over a table making pastry or labouring to create the perfect icing is simply unappealing.

While I am all for doing things on a budget – and making pastry or icing from scratch is cheaper in the long-term – there has to be a limit to being a domestic goddess. Not all of us have kitchens the size of a supermarket, despite what TV chefs would have you believe.

Not all of us are so wealthy that we can afford not to work so live a life of baking luxury. There has to be a line drawn between doing it yourself and doing yourself in.

And this is where my fruit pizza comes in. It’s simply called Fruit Pizza. I believe I made this up out of my own head, having tried a recipe for making my own savoury pizza, and deciding that I could make a dessert along the same lines. I certainly have never seen this recipe anywhere else!

Fruit Pizza
This recipe will have your friends, family and even children oohing and aahing and getting all excited, despite the fact they are basically eating fruit – lots of it.

It looks amazing when it comes out of the oven, in all its sizzly, sweet, sticky glory and tastes divine. You can mix and match fruits to your heart’s delight – but a word to the wise, oranges, clementines and satsumas do not sit well with the other fruit. Leave the strong citrus fruit alone and stick with berries, bananas and orchard fruit.

You will need:
1 large, flat pizza tray, circular or square, lightly oiled
1 sheet of Jus’Roll puff pastry OR BETTER STILL make it yourself - recipe for this is elsewhere on this blog.
2 large apples
1 cup of blueberries
1 cup of strawberries, sliced lengthways
1 cup of blackberries
1 cup of raspberries
½ cup of custard – pouring custard will do but you can make it yourself and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Don’t allow it to be too thick-it has to be spreadable.
Two tablespoons of icing sugar to dust
Some cream – Elmlea low-fat pouring cream does the trick

What to do:
Roll the pastry out over the pre-oiled tray – whether square, round or rectangle, it doesn’t really matter. Score a distinct line about 1cm away from the edge of the pastry all round – this will help the edges to rise up in puffy goodness and go all brown.

Don’t make the base too thin – the fruit juices will penetrate the pastry base otherwise.
Take the cold custard and spread it over the base as if you were spooning tomato puree over a savoury pizza base. Sprinkle some nutmeg or Allspice if you like.

Start laying the fruit onto the custardy base. Have fun creating faces, patterns or just being liberal-handed. It doesn’t matter.

Cook it for 20 minutes on gas mark 6 or the electric equivalent. Personally, cooking with gas is just the best thing in the whole wide world, until the government announces that we’ve run out. I’ll cross that ecobridge when I come to it.

When the edges are all puffy and goldeny brown, take it out of the oven, dust it with the icing sugar and serve immediately at the table, using pizza cutters and a slice. If you leave it too long before you get to the table, the icing sugar will have dissolved.

Serve with low-fat Elmlea double pouring cream (30% less fat than normal cream) or go the whole hog and serve with vanilla ice-cream.

How to be extra:
People at school used to say I was “being extra” if I drew in the margins of my essays. If you want to be extra, crush a meringue nest into pieces and put that over the top. These usually come in packs of eight and you can use the other seven for another fabulous dish like cherry meringues or Eton mess. Or just eat them by your own, when nobody but the cat can see. And he can’t tell a soul…..

How to save money
1) Berries freeze brilliantly if you are using them for baking or for smoothies. So I tend to buy bulk whenever there is an offer on for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. So if you freeze these – and they keep for ages – you can save money and time when you make this in the future. Apples can also be cut up into nice slices and, if sprinkled with a little lemon juice to prevent oxidisation, can also be frozen. However, strawberries do not freeze well AND keep their shape afterwards, so best to buy these fresh.

2) Make your own custard – but not from scratch, using vanilla pods and all that. Who has the time? Insanity. But do always have a tub of custard powder and granulated white sugar in your cupboard. This will help you save lots of money as buying a carton of pouring custard is exceptionally costly – you use it once and it’s gone.

And that's basically it! Enjoy.

Tropical fruit cake

One of the (admittedly many) things in life that winds me up is the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables jettisoned routinely in this country.

According to campaign group LoveFoodHateWaste, ordinary households throw away almost 50 per cent of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK.

This approximates to a staggering 7m tonnes of food and drink a year, more than half of which is food and drink we could have eaten.

The group claims that wasting this food costs the average household £470 a year, rising to £700 for a family with children, the equivalent of around £60 a month.

As long ago as 2008, the Institute of Food Research highlighted the appalling waste of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Here are some statistics: 

• 359,000 tonnes of potato goes uneaten every year, including 177,400 tonnes of potatoes thrown away whole and untouched (49%). 
• There are 190,000 tonnes of apples thrown out each year, including 178,800 tonnes thrown away whole and untouched.
• The food that is bought and then thrown away uneaten in the greatest proportion is salad; in the UK 45% by weight of all purchased salad is thrown away (60% by cost). 
• 26% of fresh fruit is thrown away untouched. 

Source: IFR report 2008

With this in mind, I have sought to minimise any waste in my house, going to great lengths to, for example, blanch and freeze vegetables, pulp apples into jams, sauces and puree (which can be frozen) and use up any leftovers to create tasty dishes.

Wasting food costs the average household around £60 a month

Last night, I decided I had seen enough of my remaining top quarter of a pineapple, some sad grapes and sorry-looking figs loitering in my fridge. But instead of throwing them out, I turned them into a delicious Tropical Fruit Cake. A note: I always wash fruit before eating/cooking with it.

Tropical Fruit Cake. Photo credit: SimoneySunday

Ingredients
1/4 slightly less fresh pineapple, finely diced
2 slightly less fresh figs, peeled and then finely chopped
1/2 cup of Raisins (fresh and leftover from the Christmas pudding and Christmas Cake)
Grapes, chopped in half
2 tablespoons of spiced rum
3 cups self-raising flour
250g of Flora Light (slightly salted)
2 cups of Demerara sugar
3 medium eggs
1tbsp of ground ginger

How to
Pre-heat the oven to 180.
Whisk the butter and sugar together until it creates a smooth fluffy paste
Add the eggs and stir well
Add the fruit, rum and ginger and stir thoroughly
Slowly fold in the flour until the batter is mixed well
Put into a pre-greased baking tin (I used a 30cm loaf tin)
Bake on 160-180 (depending on your oven) for 30-40 mins or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean*
Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then wrap in silver foil to keep it moist.
Tuck in with a nice cup of tea.

*bear in mind if your knife enters a chunk of pineapple, it will streak, so try stabbing it twice. Go on, it can be quite cathartic. I promise.

The result was a lovely, fruity, spicy cake, soft and moist and crumbly. You can also pretend it is healthy because of the fruit. Ahem. I might also try adding glace cherries next time for some additional lift.

If someone could also please recommend a good camera for food pics, I'd be grateful. I don't currently have a working camera and my Samsung 3S is not great at capturing photos of food or anything remotely close-up. Thanks!