In your cooking, marmalade is like sunshine in a jar.
Winter grayness is banished by adding marmalade to savory and sweet dishes. Ephemeral citrus fruits like bergamots, kumquats, and Seville oranges can bring a lot of joy in the late winter when there isn’t much seasonal produce available. Now is the time for marmalade makers to start the days-long project of shredding, soaking and simmering the fruit until it emerges golden and syrupy, full of candied peel suspended in a jelly that’s, as the inveterate marmalade-eater Nigel Slater writes, “quivering, but not so loosely set that it drips down the sleeves of my dressing gown.” It’s jam that won’t mess up your jammies.
The time is also ripe for cooking with the jarred stuff, letting its bittersweet brightness chase away the grayness of winter, for cooks whose marmalade aspirations are more immediate. Sara Cann, an owner of Birdie’s Batch, a confectionary company in West Nyack, N.Y., known for its creative marmalade flavors, suggests using it in a range of dishes: paired with Brie on crackers, mixed with mustard as a glaze for salmon or stirred into tea in place of honey and lemon.
She stated, “You have acidity, sweetness, and bitterness from the rinds.” “Marmalade can alone add a lot of complexity.” I’m especially taken with her idea to turn marmalade into instant lemonade by heating it with water until it’s syrupy, then mixing it with seltzer (or more water) and ice. For this drink, she uses monarch marmalade from her company, which is made with ginger, gin, and Meyer lemons. However, any lemon-based product will work, especially if you add a drop of gin to it.
Recipe: Spicy Marmalade Chicken and Sweet Potatoes
To give chicken and sweet potatoes a glossy coating, I used lemon marmalade, added garlic and crushed red pepper for heat and sharpness, and balanced the sweetness with salty soy sauce and fish sauce. But for this dish, an orange marmalade will work just as well.
Chewy Marmalade Oatmeal Cookies are the recipe.
Naturally, marmalade has a long history of being used in and on baked goods like cakes, scones, and puddings. I’ve added chewy oatmeal cookies to this list with marmalade in place of the usual golden syrup or molasses. Here, the key is to use a thick marmalade with plenty of peel, which creates fruity pockets, a bit like tangy raisins.
Recipe: Carrot Muffins With Marmalade
In addition, I baked cardamom-scented whole-wheat carrot muffins with marmalade in their centers. Your breakfast will have a vibrant citrus flavor thanks to the marmalade’s ability to remain slightly sticky in the soft muffin hearts without dripping onto your pajamas or dressing gown.
