Defeating the mutant citrus menace
As promised, friday's giant mutant citron met its demise this afternoon. I chopped it up and used approximately the Joy of Cooking recipe for candied citrus peel to convert it from fruit to candy.
The recipe I used was:
Assemble
- One citron
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup water
- a cup or so of powdered sugar.
- one saucepan (~3-5 quarts)
- one plate
- drying racks to spread the candied citron on.
- the usual collection of kitchen implements of destruction.
Then
- wash, quarter, and slice up the citron.
- put the citron pieces into a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil.
- boil for 10 minutes.
- drain the water, and ...
- repeat steps 2-4, and ...
- repeat steps 2-4 (three times total)
- set the pot aside, then mix a syrup of 2 cups sugar + 1 cup water.
- pour the syrup over the citron, then put back on the burner and bring to a boil.
- cover, then boil approximately 30 minutes (reducing the burner as low as it can go while keeping the mix boiling; on the stove at home I could get it down to the simmer setting) stirring frequently.
- when the syrup gets stiff and sticky (it should be foaming up in the saucepan, and it will have reduced quite a bit), take the saucepan off the burner, then
- dump the powdered sugar onto the plate, then take the candied citron pieces out of the saucepan, roll them in powdered sugar, then put them onto the drying rack to dry.
- Try to avoid eating them all on the spot.
There will be a little sauce left in the saucepan, probably all crystallised at this point. You can scrape it out (I got about 2 tablespoons worth) and set it aside for some other cooking project. I'd recommend doing this because the candied citron and the syrup has this terrifically good concentrated citrus taste to it, to the point where other candied fruit becomes "eh, it's okay."
The local grocery store doesn't get citrons in stock very often. I think they've got them in stock leading up to Sukkot, but other than that they're few and far between. This particular citron was a lucky surprise -- I'd mentioned that I wanted a citron for fruitcake, and the best remembered when she was at the big big store and saw a single solitary mutant in the produce section. It was barkingly expensive, but it was worth it.