Black Velvet

Give that person a raise! 

Whoever came up with the name "Black Velvet apricots" is a marketing genius. 

The name alone makes me never want to eat a humdrum regular ol' apricot again.

Even the more mundane shortened name of "black apricot" can work some marketing magic on me --  but then again, I am a New Yorker, with the black wardrobe to prove it. "Black velvet apricot" sets the stage for the velvety smooth skin, and a smooth jazz vibe from the fruit, a very different vibe from the sunshiney, "Have a nice day" orange-yellow of regular apricots. Granted BV apricots aren't actually black, but red cabbage isn't red, either. 

It turns out - perhaps even more impressively - black velvet apricots are also not actually apricots. They're a hybrid of apricots and plums. See what I mean about marketing?

Apricots and plums have a long and complicated history of crossing. Luther Burbank, the great 19th century botanist who, like Helen Keller and Florence Nightingale, was a regular star of 5th grade book reports back in my day, developed a 50/50 plum/apricot hybrid, later known as a plumcot.  Plumcots, in turn, have been crossed with plums to give birth to the pluot. (Pluots have become so ubiquitous that according to one account, "Pluots make up the majority of the plum market." And the pluot's place in the national consciousness has been certified with this New Yorker cartoon, which declared the pluot to be "an apricot that self-identifies as a plum.")

But unlike these half-plum and mostly-plum hybrids, black velvet apricots are apriums, an apricot/plum offspring that is mostly apricot.

As we saw with apple hybrids, the goal of breeding programs is to harness the best qualities of each parent - especially those qualities that yielded the holy trinity of a sweeter, juicier and hardier fruit. BV apricots are definitely juicier and sweeter. From what I've experienced, they're also less likely than standard apricots to be mushy or mealy.  I liked these traits, and I could see why shippers and vendors would like them too. I did notice that the the regular apricot had a pit that released much more easily, whereas the black velvet apricot's flesh clung to the pit, just like a plum. 

Not a big deal, but I'm sure a breeder is working on this "problem" right now.

But I'm not ready to write apricots off entirely. A day after buying a bunch of BV apricots, my head was turned by this display of the old-fashioned kind.

Look at that blush, I thought. The apricots were practically glowing with health. We don't need fancy tinkering, they seemed to say. We're fine the way we are.

I bought a couple. The apricot was firm and tasted both sweet and tangy. It wasn't as juicy as the black velvet apricot, but neither are a lot of fruits I enjoy. I enjoyed the indentation left behind when the pit easily slipped away. Liking one fruit doesn't mean forsaking all others, I thought. Sometimes a tweak gives you an appreciation of both the new thing and the original.

Besides, soon enough busy breeding programs will make the pluot old hat. Personally, I'm waiting for a cherry-plum hybrid.

Herbal Essence

If you have a windowsill, you can have a produce garden. If you have a balcony or a backyard, there's no excuse not to. Just do it. Plant an herb garden. Plant it now.

It might be too late to plant from seeds, but it's not too late to plant seedlings. This pot of basil, as it happens, is a mixture: new seedlings from the Union Square Greenmarket; old, nearly dead little plants I bought last season from the Greenmarket; and plants that I raised from a bag of basil seeds. But never mind the basil's origins; think instead about the convenience of having such a bumper crop. Basil for sauce, salads and garnish on demand, minus the hassle of shopping. Even better, you take only what you need from the plant, so you're spared the guilt pangs of watching the leftover half of a too-big bunch turn to slime in the fridge.

I'm growing dill, too. The dill is a bit less prolific, so I've been using it for garnishes or tiny bursts of flavor. I still need to buy dill when I want to make pickles or cucumber salad. Still, the dill justifies its keep with its lovely, lacy yellow seed head, a fireworks version of Queen Anne's Lace. 

I'm getting full mileage from the cilantro, oregano and chives below. I particularly love the earthy oregano, especially with luscious summer tomatoes. I've also just planted parsley and mint, two other workhorses.

I find a few yanks of fresh herbs add incalculable flavor - and class! - to salads and other dishes. 

I'll be thinking about this simple chopped salad in the winter doldrums.

I grow my herbs for their flavor punch, but they are also part of the world of alternative medicine. I was dimly aware that many favorite herbs are nutritional powerhouses but hadn't pondered why. As the food journalist Jo Robinson observed in her important essay, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food," herbs are powerful because they - unlike many popular fruits and vegetables - have largely been ignored by the formal and informal breeding programs that try to make our produce sweeter and hardier, and consequently their nutritional composition has largely stayed intact. 

As she writes, 

Herbs are wild plants incognito. We’ve long valued them for their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they’ve not been given a flavor makeover. Because we’ve left them well enough alone, their phytonutrient content has remained intact...Herbs bring back missing phytonutrients and a touch of wild flavor as well.

So capture that wildness - at least just enough to fit enough in a small pot or two, in the smiling face of the sun.

When Bad Produce Happens to Good People - Cherries

 You'll just have to take my word for it. These cherries are disgusting.

Sure they look dank, but perhaps you've mistakenly concluded that they are simply moist, or simply freshly washed. In fact they are bruised, rubbery and taste like mud.

Cherries are my favorite fruit, and their season is so fleeting. Maybe that's why I keep buying bags of them - and so often get disappointed. This season's crop so far has been mostly a dud. Huge, glossy Washington State imports and local Union Square Greenmarket crops have been equally tasteless.

No offense, you had no taste. 

My irrational optimism causes me to buy a pound of cherries, even after sampling a not-so-goody -- hey, at least it's better than yesterday's sample! -- leaving me with a pile of cherries that I am loathe to toss out but also reluctant to eat.

Today I found two separate bags in my fridge of has-been cherries. No, make them never-was cherries. But what to do with them?

After sampling one test-case cherry from each bag, I was ready to toss the whole lot. But fate intervened: I had some grapes to roast. Why not try roasting the cherries as well?

Roasting cherries is a bit more taxing than roasting grapes, mainly because cherries have pits, rather tenaciously attached pits. I've never had much call for cherry pitters (my typical pitting method consists of eating the cherry and spitting out the pit) so I don't have a cherry pitter on hand. I pitted these cherries the old-fashioned way: by clawing out the pits with well-scrubbed fingernails. This process left my fingernails a lovely blue-magenta and gave me a second round in which to screen the cherries. Not everyone graduated. 

I preheat the oven to 400 degrees and put foil on a cookie sheet. I spread the pitted cherries on the sheet and let them roast for about 25 minutes.

The roasting softened the cherries and let their juices caramelize.

I removed the cherries from the oven and let them cool until they were ready to use.

Use for what? you may ask. They looked just like frozen cherries that have been defrosted, and they tasted like them too. So I would suggest using them however you might use frozen Bing cherries: in fruit smoothies, cooked with oatmeal, or baked in desserts. Cherry sauce. Cherry clafouti. Sweet cherry pie. Cherry frozen yogurt. Frozen cherry daiquiris.  Any Bing cherry recipe, basically, other than raw and eaten out of hand. 

These cherries were simply too far gone for that: I'm a savant, not a miracle worker. But some days, transforming trash-worthy produce into something usable seems like miracle enough.

What the heck is that? Jicama

Not every fruit or vegetable is a showstopper. Not every kind of produce is gorgeous or dramatic or just plain weird.

Some produce items have a quiet kind of charm. Jicama is in that camp.

It's hard to image a less attention-grabbing look than jicama's. Jicamas are squat and dun-colored, and like potatoes, jicamas are tubers. Native to Mexico, the jicama was brought by Spanish colonialism to the Philippines and from there, elsewhere in Asia.

What accounts for the multi-continental spread of this modest root vegetable? Perhaps this very modesty is the secret source of the jicama's popularity.

First, as a root vegetable, jicama keeps very well. Dry, temperate storage (not refrigeration) can keep the jicama usable for months - the essence of low maintenance.

In taste, too, the jicama is modest. It tastes like a very mild, starchy apple, with a light, refreshing quality that lends well to many uses. It can be eaten raw or included in a stir-fry -- with never a fear that it will overpower a star ingredient, spice or condiment.

Jicamas are often found showcasing the great Mexican flavors of lime and hot peppers (or its kissing cousin, hot sauce). Sounds good to me!

To make a modest and refreshing Mexican snack, peel the jicama. Rid of its tough outer skin, the jicama bears a striking resemblance to a water chestnut - albeit an extraordinarily large water chestnut.

"Preparation" thereafter is extremely simple: just cut into thick matchsticks.

Some salt, some lime and your choice: hot sauce or finely diced jalapeno.

That's it? Really? Okay, you could put it on a plate.

Or add it to a platter of crudites, for a color pop against the red bell pepper and baby carrots. Julienne it and add to salads. Serve it with creamy dip or hot refried beans. Jicama can be counted on to bring a refreshing, mild taste and satisfying crunch to whatever you have in mind.

You can cook with jicama, too. Any dish that could incorporate water chestnuts is fair game for jicama - soups, stir fry, pot stickers. Jicama is a good team player.

I'm sure jicama wouldn't mind this praise - even if it would never go out of its way to draw attention to itself.

What the heck is that? Rhubarb

The world of produce has some odd stuff. I’ve already written about some of the super-weird. This season brings a less exotic, but still-really-strange item: rhubarb.

Rhubarb’s leaves contain oxalic acid, which can be toxic. The edible bit is the stalk, like celery, but it’s most frequently used in pies. Is rhubarb a fruit or a vegetable? The word “stalk” should indicate a vegetable, but a New York court  decided in 1947 that rhubarb was a fruit – at least for the purpose of regulation. (This was good news for rhubarb enthusiasts: the tariffs on imported fruits were lower than they were for vegetables.)

And rhubarb is tart. Hoo boy, is it tart. Antioxidant anthocyanins, which also give the rosy color and tart taste to sour cherries and peek-a-boo apples, are responsible. Prepare yourself to add a lot of sweetener in preparing rhubarb.

Typically, rhubarb is mostly green with a nice flush of crimson. Some varieties are also just pale green, which supposedly doesn’t affect the taste much, since even the reddest rhubarb is tart. This pile, for example, at the Union Square Greenmarket contained many stalks that were particularly green and celery-like in their appearance.

  

Of course, an adjoining pile of strawberries was green, too - perfect for folks with jaded palates who are tired of boring ripe strawberries.

But what to do with the rhubarb? You can make pies, cakes, sweet breads and slushies. Folks who like cutting the flavor of fatty meat with an acidic fruit love to use rhubarb in this way. Another customer at the Greenmarket bought over 7 pounds of rhubarb for this very purpose. "Use rhubarb for anything you'd use an orange or cranberry sauce," he advised.

As for me, every year when rhubarb season rolls in, I ponder ambitious plans and end up with the same thing: mess o'rhubarb. You can call it a compote, or a chunky summer soup. I find it bracing and refreshing. Do I need to add that it's really, really easy to make?

First, wash rhubarb well and trim the stalks' ends. If your rhubarb stalk has leaves, cut those killers off. (You'd need to eat about 11 pounds of leaves for a fatal result, but still.) Cut the rhubarb into a large dice. The size doesn't matter much - it's going to collapse very soon.

Next, add some sweetener - and some sweet fruit. (Raisins and dates are the most densely sweet potential additions; other fruits may vary in their contributions of sweetness.) How much sweetener? A good rule of thumb is about a tablespoon of sugar, or its equivalent, for every couple of stalks. You can always add more sweetener when you're done cooking if you think more is in order.

Here I've added strawberries and red grapes to keep the great crimson color.

Add a bit of water - a couple of tablespoons for a compote or stew consistency, more if you want soup or syrup. The rhubarb and other fruit will actually give off quite a bit of liquid. Let your pot come to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer.

And how long should you cook your rhubarb concoction? Around 5 - 6 minutes if you want the rhubarb to keep its shape.

Not what's going on here! I don't mind the disintegration.

And here it is, the mess o'rhubarb. Not the most photogenic dish I've ever made, but I enjoyed it.

I could cut back on the water and cooking time and call the final product compote.

I could add some chopped onion, vinegar and raisins to the compote recipe and call it rhubarb chutney.  

Next time I could even toss the rhubarb with a little sweetener, put it in a glass baking dish and bake it for a half hour or so at 350.

But for now I'll enjoy this odd "fruit" and the simple and messy method of cooking it that has become a tradition.