an un-recipe: (renegade) orange marmalade.

in the end, i should have been patient, and eaten the damned things, one by one.

---

last week i had a bag of 9 oranges which i consistently forgot to open and eat. so i decided to make juice out of them.

nobody told me, though, that navel oranges aren't very good for juicing. i felt betrayed! [1]

pitiful.

out of spite, i sat and thought what else i could do with oranges.

some people lose their appetite when spiteful;
i am not one of them.

just as i hunger for revenge,
i also hunger for food,
sometimes simultaneously.

so i grabbed some leftover bread and looked for jam, but the jar was essentially empty. the remnants barely coated one slice!

i was about to curse my luck when the thought of marmalade occurred to me.

---

actually, i don't know how to make marmalade. i might have read a recipe, some years ago, but all i could remember was that it looked easy ..

.. easy enough not to look up a recipe again. so this is what i did:

1. after zesting the oranges, i roasted them:
   
   
   
   burn in hell, traitors! (-:
   
   admittedly, i don't remember this being in any recipe, but the thought of caramelized orange flesh sounded appealing (which was later verified).
   
   
2. after 1 hour of roasting, the flesh became very soft. i spooned out the roasty remains, and then pureed them in a food processor.
   
   
3. emptying the orange gunk in a pot, i decided that 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water would do, and subsequently set it to boil with 2 tablespoons of zest.
   
   then i decided to clean out my spice cabinet, realised that i had far too much garam masala, looked at the simmering pot, and decided ..
   
   f-ck it. why not? [2]
   

it looks strangely brownish, but it's a surprisingly spicy, good taste -- "spicy" in the sense of flavorful, not heat.

revenge is sweet .. and surprisingly spicy!

it's a very distinct taste; i wonder what i'll say after a week of this stuff ..

[1] to clarify: betrayed by the oranges, not by my friends. (-:

[2] at the time i was also considering adding a bit of rum. immediately i thought better of it: waking up to coffee and rum-flavored marmalade is a bit .. much.

stir fry + noodle soup = (-:

lately i've found miso soup paste to be great, in a pinch. for instance:

stir-fry veggie noodle soup.

absolutely simple: saute a combination of what veg you have in your fridge, while waiting for the soup water to boil. cellophane noodles (or another quick-cooking pasta) is also a good bet.

if you also have some tofu (or feel like frying an egg), then add it on top.

---

the great thing about the saute is that the pan flavors infuse into the soup water, making a quick and tasty broth. this is particularly convenient, during those days when you don't want too salty a miso taste (or, in fact, any at all).

in today's noodle bowl, the broccoli and bell peppers were sauteed with store-bought lemongrass powder, as well as freshly ground fennel and coriander seeds. as i brought the saute to a close, i also shook a glug or two of rice wine vinegar.

i tell you: it was great. (-: