Its the drink talking amongst other things.

Chance would be a fine thing, but if you do ever get a chance to visit Seville in the winter time, you will literally see every tree hanging with knobbly, thick-skinned oranges shining brightly in the winter sunshine. The cathedral even has an orange grove at the side, which is stunningly beautiful. These are not just any oranges, they are Seville oranges. As distinct from a regular orange as a tangerine or pomelo, these highly aromatic, bumpy-skinned wonders originated in China and India more than 3,000 years ago – their Indian name is "narayam", (Dravidian Indian). Narayam means “perfume within”. The Arabs then took the word from the Persians and it became narandj, which was then softened by the Italians to arancia. Today in Portugal and Spain the orange is laranja or naranja. They were brought to Europe by Arab traders and groves of them were established in Andalucia, most notably around Seville, hence their name. He´s going to give us a marmalade recipe i hear you say. No, apart from anything else, there are more things to make with Seville oranges than just marmalade.

Seville Orange and Clove Gin
Pomander is the name for those oranges studded with cloves that you hang up at Christmas to make the house smell nice. I recently found while rootling around on my bookshelves a great use for the Seville orange. It sounds so old fashioned, Pomander gin, using Seville oranges and cloves. I love making fruit liqueurs including Licore de laranja, medronho, limoncello, licore de nespera. They not only make great talking points for your house guests (if and when you ever have them), create interesting cocktails and come in handy in the kitchen for cakes and puddings. I am always looking for new inspiration. This is simple but requires time and patience.

1 bottle of gin (75cl)

Seville orange

12 cloves

4 oz caster sugar

Decant the gin into a wide mouthed kilner jar. Pierce the orange with the 12 cloves, to create your pomander. Put your pomander in the gin with the sugar. Seal and give it a good shake. Leave in a dark cupboard for 3 months! after which time the gin will have taken on the delicious perfume of the orange and cloves tasting like Christmas, strain and decant into sterilised bottles. Enjoy this over ice but also delicious as a Gin and Tonic.Its a lot cheaper than Hendricks.

Seville Orange Vodka

Seville Orange
Bottle vodka
4 oz caster sugar

Using a potato peeler remove the peel from the Seville orange making sure you don’t remove the pith only the zest. Pour the vodka into a larger container add the peel and the sugar and give it a good shake. Every week give it another good shake or I even read that some people  keep it in the boot of their car so it gets jiggled around. After 3 months the Vodka will be ready to drink mmmm.

Seville orange curd and tartlets 

I have to say, that when Seville oranges are in season and I have got my baking head about me, these tarts look like little discs of winter sunshine on the plate – and taste like it, too. Once made, the curd is just as fabulous spread over toasted crumpets or wodgy white bread.

For the pastry:
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons chilled butter, diced
5 tablespoons Seville orange juice

For the orange curd:

2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
¾ cup superfine sugar
10 tablespoons butter
Juice and finely grated zest of 2 Seville oranges 

To prepare the pastry, combine flour and butter in a small bowl, and place in freezer for 10 minutes. With a food processor, pulse mixture until it resembles coarse bread crumbs. While running the processor, gradually pour 5 tablespoons juice down feed tube until mixture forms a ball. Turn pastry onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Pat into a flat disk. Enclose disk in wrap, and refrigerate.
To prepare the orange curd, beat eggs, yolks and sugar in a wide, shallow saucepan until smooth. Add butter, orange juice and zest. Place over low heat, and stir constantly until butter has melted and mixture has thickened. Remove curd from heat, and pour through a fine strainer into a bowl. Set aside to cool

Heat oven to 400 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, roll out pastry to about 1/8 inch. With a 3-inch-diameter fluted cutter, cut 24 disks, rerolling and cutting scraps if necessary. Press disks into two tartlet pans with 12 2 1/2-inch indentations. Put a heaping teaspoonful of orange curd into each tartlet. Curd will spread as it cooks. Bottle any remaining curd to use on bread and toast.
Bake tartlets until pastry is lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and transfer tartlets to a cooling rack with a small spatula. Serve at room temperature.