Ingredient

Kumquat

A kumquat is the only citrus eaten whole, skin included, and it works because the arrangement is inverted: the peel is sweet and the flesh is sharp. Bite one and you get sweetness first, then a rush of sourness, which is a genuinely odd and rather good experience.

Sweet peel, sour flesh

In an ordinary citrus the peel is bitter and aromatic and the flesh is sweet. In a kumquat the peel carries sugar as well as oil, and the flesh is markedly acidic with only a little sweetness.

Rolling one between your fingers before eating helps, because it ruptures the oil sacs in the peel and releases the aroma. So does biting the whole fruit at once rather than nibbling it, since the point is the two flavours arriving together.

Some varieties are pippy and the pips are bitter. Spitting them out is entirely acceptable and universal practice.

The kinds

Nagami

Oval, the commonest. Sharper flesh, more assertive. The standard kumquat in British shops.

Marumi

Round, slightly sweeter, thinner-skinned.

Meiwa

Round, larger, much sweeter and nearly seedless. The best for eating raw and hard to find.

Calamondin

A kumquat-mandarin hybrid, small and orange, very sour flesh. Common in the Philippines as calamansi.

Season

Winter into early spring, which is when they turn up in shops.

What to do with them

• Eaten whole, rolled between the fingers first. The primary use.
• Candied, whole or sliced, in a light syrup. They keep for months and are excellent with cheese or in a cake.
• Marmalade, which is superb — kumquats are high in pectin and need no other fruit.
• Sliced thin into a salad with chicory, fennel or duck, where the sweet-sour hit works like a pickle.
• Roasted alongside pork or a bird, whole, where they soften and caramelise.
• Preserved in salt like a preserved lemon, which works and is quicker because they are small.
• In a syrup for drinks, where the peel oils carry beautifully.

Candying them

The most useful thing to do with a punnet, and simple.

1. Wash the fruit and prick each one several times with a fork or a skewer, or slice them into rounds and flick out the pips.
2. Blanch briefly in boiling water and drain. This softens the peel and takes off any harshness.
3. Make a syrup of equal weights of sugar and water and bring it to a simmer.
4. Add the kumquats and simmer very gently until the peel is translucent — twenty to forty minutes depending on size.
5. Cool in the syrup. They keep in the fridge in their syrup, or can be lifted out, dried on a rack and rolled in sugar.

Where they work in savoury cooking

Almost always treated as a sweet, and they are at least as good against fat and salt.

• Sliced raw into a salad, seeds picked out, with bitter leaves, fennel and a sharp dressing.
• Roasted alongside pork or duck, where they burst and their peel sweetens against the fat.
• In a relish for game or terrine, chopped with shallot, vinegar and a little sugar.
• Preserved in salt like a preserved lemon, which takes a month and gives something more perfumed and less aggressive.
• Halved and charred, cut side down in a dry pan, then squeezed over fish.
• Sliced into a braise of chicken or lamb in the last twenty minutes, so they soften without disintegrating.
• With olives, which is a pairing worth trying before dismissing.

Common questions