Sun 19 - Smoked Eel & Making More Marmalade

I woke late and got to work preparing some blood oranges I'd purchased from the Venn Street market for my second attempt at blood orange marmalade.  The batch I made previously tasted great but didn't have the colour I was hoping for, on account of Sainsburys blood oranges being not bloody coloured at all.  This time, as promised by the stallholder, these were the colour that gives this short-seasoned fruit it's name.  They were cheaper than the supermarket too!

Cutting the oranges into the thin slices needed for marmalade takes some serious patience, and by the time I'd finished was well ready for some bacon, duck eggs and Cafone bread (half a loaf goes a long way).  I flashed the eggs under the grill to cook the despicable snotty white, but this ended up cooking the yolk a bit too, so it wasn't as runny as I'd have liked.  Split the yolk whilst plating up too, grrr.

I finished the day with a smoked eel sandwich, copied lock stock from this Jeremy Lee recipe.  The chef has recently moved to Quo Vadis restaurant after a long and distinguished stint at the Blueprint Cafe, and this is one of his signature dishes that he's taken with him, reviewed here on Helen Graves' excellent blog.  I served it with a tomato, radish and watercress salad as well as the pickled onions in the recipe.  This might be the most delicious sandwich I've ever made.  It sounds like a lot of mustard and horseradish in the recipe, but it warms slightly with the eel whilst the bread's charring, and tastes almost sweet mixed with the oily eel.  The onions are ridiculously simple to make, and are an essential requirement to cut through the rich, smoky fish.  Definitely try this if you can get hold of some smoked eel - which isn't cheap by the way, costing £10 for 200g, about three sandwiches worth.  A treat, of which I have many.

If you were wondering about the marmalade, the skins have to soak overnight.  I picked up some unwaxed lemons for cheap from Tesco so decided to make some lemon marmalade too.  Pictures of prepared citrus below, juice and skins separated.  To be continued tomorrow . . . as always.