I LOVE deadlines. Actually its kind of a love-hate thing, but at this moment, having completed my Oranges Cointreau, tasted them (yummy), photographed my handiwork, and posted my entry on my new blog here, all in time for the 'Tigress' Can Jam' January deadline, I must tell you I am feeling positively flush with achievement. Without a deadline, I'd still be poring over gorgeous cook books, and marveling at the culinary imagination and food photography skills of fellow home canners participating in Tigress' year-long Home Preserve Challenge.
Consider this Baby's first step - not in home preserving, but certainly in recipe testing, food photography, and blogging. So much fun it has been. I look forward to learning as I go!
Oranges Cointreau
This is my variation on "Oranges in Brandy" found in Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton's "Preserved" (Kyle Books).
6 Oranges (2 Blood, 2 Cara Cara aka Pink Navals, and 2 Tangerines)
2/3 cup water
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup Cointreau
2 500 ml jars
Prepare your mise en place (which is fancy French way of saying "clear your workspace").
Sterilize jars and metal hardware for 10 minutes in boiling water, and place mason lids in hot water, recently boiled.
1. Peel the oranges whole with a paring knife, removing the visible pith from the fruit's exterior.
2. Half each orange, carefully cutting away the exposed white stem in the center.
3. Dissolve sugar in the water over medium heat in a non-reactive medium-sized pot.
4. Simmer the oranges in the syrup for 2 minutes, turning them gently with a spoon.
5. Remove the fruit from the syrup and set them aside.
6. Boil the syrup for 5 more minutes.
7. Pour the syrup through cheesecloth or a mesh colander to filter out small bits of fruit.
8. Add the Cointreau to the filtered syrup.
9. Carefully pack the orange halves in sterilized jars with the round side facing out.
9. Pour the Cointreau-syrup over the packed fruit, using a sterilized knife to eliminate air bubbles. Leave 1/4" headroom.
10. Wipe the jar rims clean, put on the lids and screw tops. Do not over-tighten.
11. Immerse jars in a boiling water bath and process for 10 minutes (or 15-20 depending on your altitude above 1000 feet).
Voila! Beauty in a jar. All in one hour.
Garnish with a spring of fresh mint and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Tasting Note
Sweet but not overly so. The slight sourness of the fruit balances the sweetness. Though booze-preserved fruit can often pack a sharp alcoholic wallop, mixing Cointreau with a light syrup softens the blow. Subtle aroma.
Lessons Learned
Next time I'll use only Cara Cara oranges which have a delicate pink hue. Blood oranges added more scarlet than expected, and over time the preserves will deepen in color, obscuring the less vividly colored fruit.
I strained the liquid though a cheesecloth to improve transparency. Sandler and Acton's recipe calls for sprinkling orange zest on the packed fruit just before putting the lid on. I skipped this step since it adds more sediment and I prefer a more translucent effect.
Sandler and Acton also suggested the fruit be left whole in globes. Resplendently intact preserved oranges would work well if packed in larger jars, and serving them whole in a small bowl is an appealing presentation. However, in this case, each orange was halved because we were using smaller jars and mixing up the orange colours, because the only way to remove any seeds is to open the fruit up, and because orange halves are easier to 'cut' and eat with a spoon than chasing a slippery ball around a desert bowl. To retain the full fruit effect however, each orange was positioned in the jar with its round side out. If the fruit is cut open, try to ensure the two halves do not fall apart further when being handled and heated. The trick is to use firm 'young' fruit which is doable if 'seasonal oranges' like blood and cara cara oranges used in January. Mandarin oranges and tangelos will fall apart, plus they are probably too sweet for this recipe.
Cointreau was used here instead of brandy as Sandler and Acton recommend. Since Cointreau is a brandy-based orange liqueur, because it is a colourless, 40% proof alcohol, and because it was the only good brandy-facsimile on hand, this substitution made sense. Cointreau may be even better than brandy. Serving in martini glasses facilitates tipping the remaining liquid into your mouth when the fruit is gone from your bowl!
