A few jam fans have requested the recipe for my Blood Orange Marmalade. Although I would say, wait till my cookbook comes out, that won’t be until August. So here it is!

Blood Orange Marmalade is the perfect antidote to the doldrums of winter, or if you live in warmer climates, then an antidote to a dreary rainy week. These fruits are awesome! I like the Moro variety, which are the most colorful of the blood oranges, with a deep red flesh and a rind that has a bright red blush. The flavor is stronger and the aroma is intense, bitter and has a hint of tart raspberry. The Moro variety is believed to have originated at the beginning of the 19th century in Sicily.

Blood oranges are nutricious, with their red pigment (officially, anthocyanin) an antioxidant that may diminish the risk of heart disease, some types of cancer, cholesterol accumulation, and cataracts, plus they’re chock full of vitamin C and that great citrus taste that I crave in cold or dreary weather. With the addition of a little brandy, this marmalade is delicious and cozy.
Makes about four 8-ounce jars

INGREDIENTS
4 pounds blood oranges (about 12 blood oranges), cleaned, halved and juiced to produce 4 cups of juice
1½ pounds green apples, such as Granny Smith
4 cups sugar (about 2 pounds)
3 cups water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 ounces brandy

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
1 square cheesecloth
1 chinois sieve or jelly bag

PREP
For the apples:

Rinse the apples in cold water.  Stem and cut the apples into quarters without peeling or coring them.

Place the apples in a 6-to-8 quart nonreactive pot and cover with 3 cups plus 4 ounces water.  Bring to a boil and allow them to simmer for 30 minutes on low heat until the apples are soft.

Collect the juice made by the apples by pouring this preparation into a fine chinois sieve or jelly bag, pressing lightly on the fruit to release the juice. Let the juice drain out completely so you have the proper 2 ½ cups, preferably overnight in the refrigerator.

For the blood oranges:

The next day, slice the blood oranges in half and juice them, producing 4 cups of juice, and reserving any seeds and the skin of two oranges. Using a spoon, scrape the membrane, white pith and any excess fibers out of the oranges; place the membrane and seeds in a piece of cheesecloth and tie shut. Using a sharp paring knife, slice the peel into thin ¼-inch strips. Blanch the peel in 2 cups of water, bringing water to a boil, and then discarding the water. Add new water, bring to a boil again; repeat three times.

Place the apple juice, orange juice, lemon juice, blood orange peel, 4 cups sugar and the seeds in cheesecloth into a 6- to 8-quart dutch oven, stainless steel or copper pot.

 For the jars and lids:

Wash and rinse jars; put them into a big stockpot; cover jars with water and bring to a boil; boil covered for 10 minutes to sanitize. Let stand in hot water until ready to fill.

Bring lids and rings to boil; turn off heat; let stand in hot water until ready to screw onto the jars.

COOK

Bring fruit to a boil and boil rapidly, stirring gently. Skim any foam that rises. Cook on high heat for 10 minutes, and stir constantly. Skim again if need be. Remove the cheesecloth with the seeds and stir; return to a boil and boil rapidly for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

The syrup will reach the gel stage at 221 ° F (105 ° C) on a candy thermometer, about 10 more minutes. If you don’t have a thermometer, test the consistency by placing a teaspoon of the hot marmalade onto one of the frozen spoons you prepped. Let it rest for a few minutes, then test the gel by tilting the spoon vertically; what is the consistency? If the marmalade run loosely like syrup then it’s not done yet, but if it glides slowly along in a gloopy glob, then the preserves are ready. If syrupy, bring it to a boil again for 1 to 5 minutes.

PRESERVE

Let marmalade sit for 2 minutes before filling jars, so it can just start to congeal. Fill jars to 1/4″ of top — using a wide-mouth funnel and a ladle to fill the jars helps avoid a big mess.

Wipe rims clean with a damp paper towel. Screw on lids (2-peice lids are easiest to use).

Put filled jars in water; make sure they’re thoroughly covered with 1 inch of water over the top of the lids. Boil for 6 minutes (add 1 minute more for every 1,000 ft. above sea level).

Lift the jars out of the water with your jar lifter or tongs and let them cool without touching or bumping them in a draft-free place. You can then remove the rings if you like. Once the jars are cool, you can check that they’ve sealed pressing gently in the center of the lid with your finger. If it pops up and down, it’s not sealed. If it’s firm and doesn’t move, then it’s sealed. If any of your jars have a faulty seal, don’t panic, just put the jar in the refrigerator right away and you can still use it – breakfast tomorrow!

Once cooled, store them in a dark place like a cupboard or closet. They last up to 12 months. After about 8 months, they may darken in color and start to separate or become less gelled. Marmalade will last two to four months once open and refrigerated.
Pairs well with strong and creamy blue cheese such as a Fourme d’Ambert or a creamy and sweet Cantalet; great on buttered whole-wheat toast; delicious with chocolate or ginger cookies.

This is the time of year when those of us that live in less temperate climates being to forget what summer feels like, and we instead must dream of warm wind and green leaves, fresh fruit and lazy warm afternoons. In winter, everything is internalized and life moves at a slower, paler pace. It’s a time when we need fresh tastes in our mouths, bitter, bright and salty reprieve from the cold and drab. Marmalade is the perfect winter condiment, seasonal and effective.

We’ve been churning out marmalade like you wouldn’t believe. Murray’s Cheese is featuring our Grapefruit & Smoked Salt Marmalade in their “Pair of the Month Club” where you get a 1/2 lbs of cheese and it’s perfect mate each month (cheese + jam is drool-worthy), and our staff has been busily zesting and juicing lovely ruby red grapefruits from Florida.

grapefruit jars ready to be labeled in the Anarchy kitchen

Jam and cheese are a perfect pair; I would even argue it trumps P B & J (sacrilege, I know). You can now buy our Strawberry Balsamic Jam online and in the catalog at Murray’s Cheese! Perfect for gifts to friends and family far away, since they have great combos and they’ll pack up a perfect basket full of cheese, jam, crackers and/or meat and ship it anywhere.  Take caution, Murray’s is a dangerous and magical place full of cheese and other delicacies that will knock your socks off. I’ve been known to waddle out of their store at Grand Central Terminal, bound for my family upstate with bags full of things I just couldn’t resist sharing.

Really cool bonus? It’s actually cheaper to buy my jam at Murray’s than Whole Foods and many of the specialty shops where it’s sold (though you can’t beat $5 at Green Grape Provisions in Fort Greene).

Send grandma some cheese and jam or xmas: http://www.murrayscheese.com/prodinfo.asp?number=60893826283

Honey bees have been obsessed with my jam these past few weeks. Every market they come and hover, crawling into the sample jars. I came up with the solution of leaving an almost empty jar of Grapefruit & Smoked Salt Marmalade  on the side of my booth as a lure — and it worked! Everyone is happy and no one got stung, here’s some video of the happy little guy ~

There are 2 spots left for tomorrow’s jam class — signup here if you’re interested: http://tedandamysupperclub.com/classes/october-5/

Learn the art of jam making with me this fall! I’ll show you how to take advantage of your victory garden, local CSA or farmer’s market and make delicious homemade jam in these hands on classes.

You’ll learn the time-honored tools and tricks to preserve summer in a jar with my easy methods. Each participant gets a jar of homemade jam that they’ve helped make!

Classes are for beginner’s, but folks with jam skills are welcome to join and learn some new tricks.

Read about the classes in the New York Times article “We Jammin“.

Private classes are also available in your own home or my jam facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Please email for more information: anarchyinajar@gmail.com.

Upcoming Classes

Visit the Ted & Amy Supper Club website for more info and to register.

The classes will be held at the wonderful home of Kara Masi, hostess extraordinaire. Kara has an amazing apartment in Fort Greene that is comfortable and great for cooking, eating and sharing. The relaxed home environment is a great place to learn how to preserve! Wine and sparkling water will be served to help loosen up your jam game.

It’s Rosh Hashanah this weekend and Yom Kippur next week, and in honor of the holidays, the amazing baker Melissa Weller is making challah this weekend, and I’ll have it for sale at Smorgasburg Market in Williamsburg this Saturday, along with the usual bread and jam.

taken by Arthur Schwartz

photo by pkiddo

I help scrape the seeds from the hot little peppers, save them in small towels and jars, until March when I plant them in earth and let them grow into fragile seedlings, until the sun is warm enough the soil unfrozen and they can be planted and grow stronger and flower, until small green peppers start to form, and then comes the day that they turn colors — yellow and orange deepen into red and even chocolate purple — and the day dawns when we eat them — in curry and chili, and preserve them in hot sauce and hot pepper jelly.

I have a secret. Every market a number of folks ask me what my favorite flavor is. I honestly love all my flavors, so I pick whichever I’m most fond of that day. But the honest truth is it’s hot pepper jelly, all the way. I love the sweet and spicy, slightly numbing hit to the tongue and the deep and acidic tang of apple cider vinegar, I love it with cheese and on meat, I love it straight from the jar.

This year, Ben grew some amazing peppers. His pepper patch gets more awesome every year.This year his favorite pepper is the aji dulce, and he’s been waxing poetic about it all season. It really is a fun pepper with a delicious flavor — we made a super amazing curry with it last night. It’s from South America,  mostly Venezuela, and is related to the habanero, but with a much milder, smoky flavor. It has barely any heat but smells hot and dangerous. It’s just one of the many peppers I used in the jelly this year. Come try some at Smorgasburg or New Amsterdam markets this weekend!

Some may not know this, but I’ve been selling bread at my Smorgasburg booth every Saturday this summer and autumn. Not just any bread, some of the best bread in NYC (actually, the East Coast — it often gets compared to Tartine in San Fran) made by Melissa Weller at Roberta’s in Bushwick.

Melissa, a former chemical engineer and French Culinary Institute alum who has worked at Babbo, Sullivan Street Bakery, and most recently as head baker at Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Bouchon Bakery in New York. Melissa kneads her bread by hand, rather than machine; this allows for slower fermentation, which gives the bread the fullest flavor possible. The loaves are then wood-fired in Roberta’s house-built oven.

The current menu is:

French Stick This is what you grab to accessorize dinner (and eat half of on the way home): A slim, crunchy-on-the-outside baguette made with Sir Galahad bread flour, water, natural leaven, sea salt, and the tiniest amount of fresh yeast. $3

Batard (aka: Fat Stick) A heftier version of our crusty French stick—it’s great for bigger dinners and heroes. Ingredients: Sir Galahad bread flour, water, natural leaven, sea salt, yeast. $4

City White In a more bucolic setting, we’d call this a country white. Coming from Bushwick, we call it a hearty city white that’s great for sandwiches; it’s made with Sir Galahad bread flour, Cayuga whole wheat flour, natural leaven, water, and sea salt. $6

Whole Wheat The star ingredient in this soft, chewy wheat loaf is flour from Cayuga Pure Organics in upstate New York. The only other ingredients: a little Sir Galahad bread flour, natural leaven, water, and sea salt. $6

As autumn unfolds, I wanted to give a thank you to everyone who stopped by our market booths, came to a jam class, bought a jar at a store, or enjoyed the bounty — it was a great summer, thanks to your awesomeness!We’ll miss Emma, a fabulous jam apprentice who many folks saw at the markets all summer. She’s returned to school in Massachusetts, but hopefully the jamarchy can lure her back next year.

A jamarchist twist on a classic, Anarchy’s Marmalade Manhattan is a fun late summer drink for your next garden/stoop/deck party.  Rowan’s Creek Kentucky Bourbon is smooth, rich, with notes of caramel and vanilla. More vanilla, some pear and a little smoke hit the palate too, and when muddled Grapefruit and Smoked Salt marmalade is added, along with a hit of lemon juice and some citrusy bitters, it’s a party in the mouth.  An orange twist and a brandy soaked cherry make delicious garnishes.