Serving jelly used to be a form of boasting. It was so incredibly difficult to do. You had to use starch made out of dried ground orchid root, or boil up fruit to get at the pectin, or get the jelly out of the swim bladder of a sturgeon or the grated shavings of a baby deer's velvet-soft antlers. Putting a jelly on the table was a way of letting the world know that you had troops of servants doing complicated things below stairs. It was all quite a faff.These days, making jelly couldn't be easier. You buy a crisp, clear leaf of gelatine from the supermarket, soak it in warm water, mix it with juice and set it in the fridge. Yet it still has the feeling of magic, or alchemy - pig's trotter turned into juddering, shimmering gold.When I was a child, my mum always made jellies for special occasions, such as birthdays or dinner parties. Perfect happiness was the "schhhhop" of suction as the first spoonful was served up, the pouring of single cream over the bowl, the joyful sluicing of jelly back and forth between one's front teeth.If you are making today's recipe with children, they will enjoy the trick of suspending some fruit between the layers. If you are making it for grown-ups, try a more sophisticated unlayered jelly: simply add 1 tbsp Grand Marnier to the mix.
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Blood orange jelly
Skill level: basicPrep time: 20 minutes
Chill time: 1 hourServes 3
300ml blood orange juice
25g caster sugar (1 tbsp)
3 sheets leaf gelatine
3 oranges1 Gently heat the orange juice with the sugar in a pan until the sugar dissolves (but do not boil, as the gelatine will be less effective).
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If you want to turn out the jelly for a bit of glorious wobbliness, use a jelly mould instead of a glass bowl in step 3. To turn it out, sit your bowl into another bowl or container filled with warm water to warm through the mould. Turn your bowl on to a serving plate and the jelly should drop onto it. If you have a stubborn jelly, just repeat the process.For showing off
To make a layered jelly, as Joyce Molyneux did at the Carved Angel, do a layer using the ingredients above. Put in the fridge and when set, repeat the initial method, but this time use normal orange juice and blood orange pieces. You can layer this on top of your original blood orange one and add some chopped mint for extra flavour.What else can you do?
You can repeat this method with other types of fruit juice and fruit pieces to make all kinds of jelly. Just repeat the quantities of juice and gelatin above, and add in raspberries, melon chunks or pomegranate seeds.
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