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Desserts
Appears in
Published 2003
“I wanted to do it the hard way, which is also the most pleasurable,” wrote feminist author Germaine Greer, explaining why she makes her own marmalade with hard-to-find Seville oranges.
I, too, take great pleasure in preparing sweets from scratch. But I hope Ms. Greer won’t mind if I change her phrase “the hard way” to “the slow way.”
The Mediterranean is graced with wonderful fruits bulging with flavor in every season. And the women of the region often employ slow-cooking methods to turn these fruits into “spoon-sweets,” syrupy preserves, pies, or dried fruit “leathers.” The metamorphosis of orange and grapefruit rinds into candied sweets (such as Armenian turunc) by the simple addition of sugar, water, and slow-cooking, has always struck me as . . . well . . . magical.