Getting your money’s worth
Give me any word and I’ll tell you how that word comes from Greek Hebrew! What’s funny is that I had made that joke to some friends earlier, more than once, and this time I’m completely (or at least mostly) right. Succade is a term that applies to candied peels of citrus–Succade may have come from the word Sukkah a temporary structure built during the Jewish holiday Sukkot. Citron (known in hebrew as etrog) is essential to the holiday and according to wikipedia, it’s fairly common that the fruit is candied at the end of Sukkot.
That’s enough history for today, I have finals coming up dontcha know. Yeast Genetics and Food Enzymology are kind of kicking my ass but I do at least have some yummy candied orange peels to eat while I study for them. Think I can get extra credit with all this food knowledge I’ve aquired via cooking?
Candied Orange Peels
- Sliced peels of 3-4 oranges
- 1 1/2 cups of water
- 2 1/2 cups of sugar
Slice the oranges on top and bottom so you have a stable surface, then following the curve of the fruit, cut large sections of peel off the oranges. Once you have these, slice them into long, rectangular peels. If the fruit has a lot of pith (the white, bitter lining between the flavorful peel/flesh of the fruit) try to trim some of it off. Don’t worry about removing all of it however because you 1) Do not want the candies too thin and 2) The bitterness of the pith is reduced with 4 rounds of blanching.
Place all the peels in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil and let sit for 5 minutes. Drain the water, refill and repeat this another 3 times, for a grand total of 4 rounds of blanching. This will pull out the bitter flavor from the peels.
After the fourth round add in the 1 1/2 cups of water and the sugar. Cook this over medium or medium-low heat for approximately 1 1/2 hours. The liquid will reduce to a thick syrup (I’m going to need to think up a way to use this too) and the peels will become translucent and quite pretty. Now you’ve got a few options:
- Let the peels and sugar come to room temperature and store in a jar together. You’ll have really pretty, sticky, peels to garnish with or bake into dishes.
- Place the peels on a drying rack for 24 hours and then roll loosely in sugar to make sugared peels. These are delicious to eat alone or bake into cakes.
Do this with any citrus fruit! Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Grapefruits…on and on the list could go. Now you never have to let a single bit of citrus go to waste. Well, except for the seeds, but I’m not a gardender or a miracle worker so don’t look to me for 100% use of the fruit.
