Friday, February 20, 2009

Great Ideas

My husband often has great ideas. Unfortunately a lot of his great ideas involve a lot of work on my part! The latest great idea was that we should ask one of our neighbours if we could pick the "kinkan" from her tree that she never uses anymore. Of course she said - no problem please pick away..... So my husband got us all together and we went on a kinkan picking expedition and came home with a huge basket of kinkan. At this stage I really had no idea what a kinkan was, let alone how to turn it into marmalade (which was what my husband thought I should do) but for the sake of family happiness I went along with the plan. After coming home with our huge basket of kinkan I researched what they actually were and discovered they were cumquat (or kumquat - depending on what book you look in). For anyone who is silly enough not to know what a cumquat is... it is a VERY small citrus fruit that you can basically only eat the skin of. To peel it is a ridiculous task, but in order to make marmalade a very necessary task! In the end I managed to make a few jars of runny marmalade and some much more successful candied cumquat and some even more successful candied cumquat rind. Needless to say there is still a big basket of cumquat sitting on my kitchen floor.... anyone want me to send them a few?



5 comments:

  1. lol, I don't envy you peeling that lot! The candied fruit looks delicious, though. I didn't know you could only eat the peel.

    PS I got my sausages from Jusco!

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  2. Jo, I have a huge bag of plums here. Any use?
    No, never mind, nor are kumquats to me - I always wondered what they were!

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  3. Anonymous9:17 pm

    I second that on the peeling but you have a fabulous "silver lining" jam and lovely sweet tidings to eat!

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  4. I was given some kumquat this year for the first time. We had some at oshogatsu, seeds and all. I thought that was too much work, so, got a nice big nice, chopped each in half, squeezed out the seeds and threw the rest in a pot of sugar and water 2:1 ratio. No one will eat it but me, but...I love them! Wish I lived close enough to take you up on your offer!!! (The insides come out quite easily after boiling.)

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  5. Anchan: if the fruit is boiled etc. then the insides can be eaten - the ones I were given were just so small it was so difficult to do anything with them!
    Dad... I'll swap you plums for kumquats any day!
    Girl Japan: I must admit that I did make another batch of sugared peel despite the cramp I received in my hands when making the first lot. Sometimes the pain really is worth it!
    Kim: Depsite all my efforts to please my husband I seem to be the only one eating them too... Your method seems like a good one. Maybe next year!

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