Seville oranges, allspice, three recipes and the outdated sweeper system
Abundance: Thursday 18 January 2024
January is the month of making marmalade for other people. While my love for Seville orange marmalade is deep, it is infrequent: if I make 12 jars, I keep only 2.
I often make Seville orange and cardamon gin1, or a very special Seville orange curd2, - any new arrivals on this thinnest part of the seasonal conveyor belt should be celebrated, after all - but this year I resolved to think of a new recipe before I bought any.
Chard, this beautiful frosty morning
Breakfast: Marmite on toast. It finished the jar.
I looked up from checking emails while I ate to see a tray of unpromising nuggets: dandelion roots that my wife had exhumed, washed and chopped. My wife is a medical herbalist with years of training and experience. She has been telling me - in short instalments as she knows I’m hard of thinking - about dandelion’s properties, its benefits to digestion and gut health. What she hadn’t told me was why the perfect place for these roots to dry was, apparently, on the shelf above my computer screen.
Adding a jar of Marmite to the shopping list tipped the scales towards a supermarket visit. I was met by a wall of Seville oranges. My resolve dissolved: I bought a net of 10.
The Seville orange gin I make has much to recommend it - gently bitter and lively as it is - but a few months ago, with the last sip of the last batch, a small bell rang in my mind: would this be good if it was intensified, if everything was turned up a few notches, to become a bitters?
My January brain picked up that autumn thread.
A bitters is a drink traditionally made by infusing alcohol with big flavours - usually including herbs and/or spices - that lend it a bitter or bittersweet flavour. You might be familiar with angostura bitters, or Campari. Orange bitters is a much loved variation on the bitters theme.
I told my wife my excellent Seville orange plan.
‘And by the way, what’s happening with those dandelion roots above my desk?’
‘You should try some of the dried dandelion root in that bitters recipe.’
Here’s a couple of minutes of her telling me about dandelion and how it can be useful.
So rather than make 1 litre, I’ve split the bitters into two half litre jars where the only difference is only one has dandelion root, in order to give myself chance to see what effect it has.
Seville orange bitters
I spent my childhood summers in Lancashire, happily drowning in a sea of dandelion and burdock (then not available in the south). Its flavour is a cross between Coke, bay leaves and something that tastes purple, as odd as that sounds. I am as confident as I can be that it must be one (or both) of the ingredients in its name that made it so special. I’m hoping it’s the dandelion.
As I start making it, I have an old memory of being told not to play with - and most certainly do not eat - dandelions, as they will make you pee yourself. It turns out that their old English folk name is ‘piss-a-bed’ (the French have an equivalent) in response to the apparently diuretic effect of the plant's roots. Given that the recipe involves a good deal of vodka - with its famed ability to have the drinker telling everyone in the same postcode ‘you’re my best mate, you are, I love you’ - I’m not going to worry about a bit of dandelion.
Seville oranges are very definitely doing a working men’s club impersonation of other oranges. Rather than tight and juicy, they are as slack as end-of-year school tennis balls. Use the sharpest peeler you have.
Makes two 500ml jars
Zest of 10 Seville oranges
1 litre of vodka
½ tbsp coriander seeds
½ tbsp fennel seeds
8 cardamom pods, gently crushed
2 handfuls of dried dandelion root, optional
Preheat the oven to 120ºC fan, 140°C non-fan.
Use a sharp peeler to remove the zest of the oranges and spread them on a baking sheet. Place the sheet in the centre of the oven for 40 minutes, shaking the tin once in a while. They needn’t be entirely desiccated but they should smell lively and be fairly dry; allow a little extra time if needed. Add the spices, the peel and the dandelion root to a jar (or jars) large enough to hold all the ingredients, and pour over the vodka.
Stir and cover. Allow to infuse, out of direct sunlight, for 2 weeks, shaking it every day or so.
A week later
Both bitters are very orangey and bitterly delicious. The difference is marked: the one with the dandelion root - maybe like a smoky whisky - takes a little more getting to know as the bitterness is distinctly upped, though so is the complexity.
How will I use them? I think the dandelion bitters might be the more ‘medicinal’ - for post- and pre- meal digestifs - while the other might be more ‘recreational’, taking over the Campari duties in negronis and to enjoy with soda.
As it turns out, I got two recipes from those 10 fruit.
The bitters recipe uses just the zest, and it seemed a shame to offer all that fruit to the compost without using its flavour first.
A text came in from a friend; we should go for a post-Christmas catch up, he suggested. Of the many things that flash across my mind when I think of him is his love of spiced rum.
Another lightbulb.
This is so often how - if you can relax enough to let it happen - recipes walk out of the mist towards you.
Seville orange spiced rum
Likely as not, spiced rum originated when big flavours were added to somewhat sketchy booze to make it more palatable. As is often the case, what starts as frugality and necessity evolves into something artisanal.
This has nothing sweet about it: I wanted bitter, sour and spices to dominate, while leaving me room to sweeten depending on how I planned to drink it.
You’ll find recipes with vanilla pods, cinnamon and other spices that imply sweetness: I’ve gone for allspice, largely because it’s characteristics are perfect here but also as it shares a Caribbean home with rum.
This with ginger beer is exceptional. With a little nutmeg syrup, fig leaf syrup or the syrup from a jar of stem ginger.
700ml white rum
the flesh (pith and zest removed) of 10 Seville oranges
8 allspice berries, lightly crushed
a monkey’s paw of ginger, peeled and finely sliced
Squeeze each orange into a large Kilner jar, and add the allspice and ginger.
Pour the rum into the jar, and leave for a week before tasting; leave longer if you fancy, or strain and decant into a bottle. Enjoy as it is, or with ginger beer and plenty of ice.
And here’s maybe the best way to use the Seville orange spiced rum: a wintery mojito.
Seville orange mojito
The classic mojito - white rum, lime, mint, sugar and soda water - is open to endless variations, and as a seasonal new year uplifter this one is hard to beat. By all means tweak the quantities if you prefer more rum - take this as your guide and taste and adjust until it’s as you like it best. This is very gingery: by all means ease it back by going for ginger ale rather than ginger beer, or swap for soda or even tonic for something very different.