Bitter Oranges, Cannoli And Tears

I realise that bitter oranges, cannoli and tears have no particular association with each other, nor with anyone else but myself. But blogging is writing down in many ways what’s on my mind, so voila, here it is.

I have made no secret that February and March are difficult months for me.  Grief slumps or sometimes valleys come and go throughout the year and that is just a reality for those who grieve, but can be especially intensified around their death anniversaries and a loved one’s birthday.

On top of that comes Lent as it does regularly this time of the year, that calls for reflection, spiritual readings, and drawing inward, three things that are natural for me to do anytime.

I followed my own advice that I give others in dealing with death anniversaries.  I plan ahead for some distraction, which for me, travel serves a perfect venue.

The trip went well and provided all that I had hoped it would as I wrote about 3 posts back.  Distraction is just a distraction, not a panacea.  Grief is impermeable and unshakable and it will and does run its own course.

A Lenten prayer group has been fruitful and nightly readings as well.  Hearing friends voices is always good for my soul. Thank God for their presence in my life!

My own little efforts in living despite the inevitable are doing whatever brings me joy.  Seeking beauty and seeking joy becomes a daily mantra, though easier to be said that always followed through.

Sadness and grief become a constant companion of sorts, you accept it and move on with living.  Handicap people have to deal with their loss every day of their lives.  It is just an inescapable reality.

The past 3 weeks have also been filled with events that have saddened me, with the killing of many innocents in New Zealand and the recent suicide of a young female student survivor of the Parkland school shooting.

Bitter oranges come in the market this time of year too.  These plump little orange globes are a strange fruit. They look about the same, except appear lumpier than regular oranges.

Full of seeds, not very juicy, but they are bursting with bright sourness in a good way.   Maybe not as puckering as a lemon, but close. I find them to have lovely floral tones in taste.

The French call them les oranges ameres(bitter) and “bigarades”.    You will see loads of them hanging heavy on trees along the Cote D’Azure.

They are used in making the famous French orange liqueurs, Grand Marnier and Cointreau.  They are used in the classic French dish, duck a l’orange or bigarde.

The exquisitely perfumed flowers are called Neroli and have been long used to makes perfumes in Grasse and orange flower water used in Mediterraneum pastries and cuisine.

The popular boat shaped cookie, called  “navettes”  announces Chanteleur around Marseille and is flavoured with l’eau de fleur d’oranger.

These bitter fruits are also called Seville oranges.  The British call them delightful when made into their beloved marmalades.  I decided to do the same.

My marmalade though would probably not please the sweet tooth Brits!  I was totally aghast by the amount of sugar they put into marmalades.

Recipes calling for up to 2 and half times more sugar than the weight of the fruit  were plentiful and quickly discarded as bordering on insanity unless you would call that orange flavoured sugar marmalade.

The British are definitely marmalade masters, but only if you love it drowned in sugar!   Unfortunately, some sugar saturated Americans carry the flag of honour in sugaring everything now.

I wanted to taste the fruit!  Same goes for lemons!  Why smother citrus or any fruit in sugar!   I know I am not going to start a revolution here, and yes sugar acts as a preservative, but a lot less gives such a fresher and truer taste of the fruit!

Enough said and chacun à son goût.  Call me a citrus libertarian!

This isn’t a food blog, though I like to share a few photos of my culinary creations here and there.  After all, it is one of my favourite passions!

After juicing and scraping out the pith of the oranges, I put the seeds and white pith into a cheesecloth bag tied with a string.

I found slicing the orange rinds rather meditative and enjoyable, except for watching out for my fingers. The peels, juice and bag of pith were left to soak overnight to help extract the pectin.

Next day came sterilizing the jars, and then boiling up the orange rind mixture.  I used only half the weight of oranges in sugar and it was certainly sweet enough!

The hard part was waiting for the mixture to reach the jelling stage. I found it easier to judge this by putting some of the mixture on a cold plate to see if it had begun to gel and by looking at the colour deepen.

Verifying with a thermometer is good too to see that it reaches around 103 to 104 C.  The marmalades set perfectly and have even made a second batch since soon there won’t be any more oranges ameres for sale.

Strange how one taste can lead to another and that is exactly what happened.  Orange marmalade made me think of orange flecked cannoli like I loved eating in Sicily, another Lenten speciality.

Besides, March 19 was the feast day of Saint Joseph, where many Italians still celebrate with an altar laden with sweets.  Cannoli are popular offerings you will find there.

In my mind, in other to make the very best Cannoli, I needed to make my own ricotta cheese, which I had read is a breeze to put together.

My new yaourtière or yoghurt maker came with a bac a fromage blanc, great for making French fresh cheese, and for ricotta too.  I had almost bought a rudimentary ricotta strainer when in Sicily.

It was even easier than the delicious homemade yoghurts that I now make every 5 days to ensure that the live yoghurt strains stay alive and healthy if they are going to be beneficial to intestinal flora.

Fortunately, I have a superb organic food store across the street with marvellous vegetables and raw milk, both goat and cow that I have been using for my yoghurt.

A litre of raw milk brought to the boiling stage is easily curdled with a few drops of lemon juice.  All that was left to do is allow it to slowly be strained of its whey in the fromage bac strainer.

With candied orange rinds from my orange marmalade and homemade ricotta, all that was left to do was making the cannoli shells.

There was a little problem in that I did not have any metal or bamboo cannoli shells to wrap the dough around, but with a little American ingenuity, all can be accomplished, right?

Some thick aluminium foil wrapped around the handle of my schnitzel pounder proved sufficient enough although not Ideal.

Making the cannoli shells sounded straight forward and easy.  As unusual, there are a plethora of recipes, some calling to add a smidgen of cocoa powder or not to the dough.

Some insisting on using Marsala wine, and others either just red and white.  This pastry is more associated with Palermo where it was created, but popular all over the island and beyond.

Since I happened to have a pasta roller, the rolling out of the dough went faster than if had I done it with my traditional French wooden baton, the old fashioned way.

My makeshift aluminium cannoli forms held up to the frying, though not overly reusable.  After adding a tad of powdered sugar and some chopped candied orange peels to the ricotta, the cannoli shells were ready to fill just before you want to serve, otherwise, they may soften.

I had bought some way too expensive Iranian pistachios that I finely chopped to grace the ends of the cannoli, just like I have eaten in Ortigia, the minuscule island dangling off Syracusa in southern Sicily that I wrote about in June 2017.

My cannoli were good, but not as light as I had enjoyed in Ortigia.  Apparently, I could use a cannoli stage there, or elsewhere in Sicily, which would give me another reason to travel to this beautiful island.

Anyway, I will buy some real metal cannoli shells to practice again till then.

As for the tears, they are always ready to flood my eyes in a split second.  It happens often at church and when I see little boys being little boys, in between other times.

Tears are always welcome and to be expected.  Crying is different and with grief being more pervasive, tearfulness occurs much more frequently.

Sometimes the tears just sit there waiting to fall as if frozen in time.   Grief freezes you in time too.  Like in an inexplicable time warp.

I wrote a post about Frozen Tears ( April 2014), long before my son died.  Human sorrow happens as a part of our lives, some having more than others.  No one is spared.

Grieving has its own timetable not to be interfered with human restraint or will.  It just exists and you accept it as your new reality and keep living as best you can despite it.

Better to make delicious cannoli to eat, than become a shell of a human being.

P.S.  More pastry stories to come.