When Bad Produce Happens to Good People - Bananas

New Yorkers of a certain vintage fondly remember the commercials of Crazy Eddie, a discount electronics store, whose tagline was "His prices are insaaane!" Perhaps the most memorable were those touting Christmas in August! discounts with a compelling manic energy. 

These bananas have inspired August in Christmastime.

Bananas aren’t my favorite fruit, but I am a favorite customer of many fruit vendors. How better to express appreciation for my regular $20 purchases than by throwing in a couple of maybe-not-so-saleable-in-the-first-place bananas? I'm happy to share good bananas with friends, then take the baddies home. When no banana enthusiasts spoke up, I've taken all of them all home. Transport isn't kind to bananas. Even those that start out in decent shape can acquire quite a bit of dinging en route home.

I had gotten into the habit of peeling the dubious bananas, cutting off the worst bits - braver souls probably use them too, unflinchingly - dicing what remained and putting the banana survivors in Ziplock bags.

And off to the frozen graveyard they inevitably go.

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For years I would freeze overripe bananas, or parts of damaged bananas, with the thought that one day I’d use them for banana bread. Truth be told, I had a somewhat spotty history as a banana bread baker: a couple of nice breads for brunches and gifts, offset by the time I agreed to make a loaf for the birthday of a much-disliked boss. (I noticed that I had 2 bananas instead of the 4 required by the recipe, but couldn't be arsed to buy another 2. I went ahead with my banana-deficient banana bread and fielded compliments for the freshly baked, “Um, is that honey cake?” the next day. Co-workers eating free, sweet food: not the most discerning diners on earth.)

The banana bags, which in time would grow brown and covered with ice crystals, piled up in the freezer. “Does this banana spark joy?” I’d ask myself would fall on me during a rummaging. Of course it didn’t – and it was competing for primo real estate in the freezer. So out it would go, to compost or garbage. To avoid playing this game in perpetuity, I’d try to rebuff the generous gifts of my vendor friends but my refusals were never successful.

Hot weather - a distant memory now in December - inspired a new idea when I pondered the banana gift conundrum: coffee smoothies. Most commercial coffee smoothies are way too sweet for my taste (for good reason - this one has 105 grams of sugar, plus 8 grams of fat and 610 calories) so I liked the idea of experimenting with making my own. Besides, I needed a use for my colony of frozen bananas.

I knew that using brewed coffee or even coffee syrup would be a problem - it'd make the smoothie too watery. I needed concentrated coffee flavor! A trip to a 99-cents store in Brighton Beach, where I spied this hitherto unsung brand, "Pampa," gave me the solution.

Instant coffee, a mainstay of my childhood utterly forgotten in my coffee-centric adulthood, would give me the flavor bomb I needed.

Coffee Smoothies

Making good smoothies is a craft, not a science. Fiddle around with proportions based upon your taste and what you have on hand. Here is my basic working recipe.

Ingredients:

2 bananas, peeled, diced and frozen (dicing before freezing makes preparation easier on the blade of your food processor)

1/2 cup milk, or more to taste (skim, lowfat, whole, nondairy = all good)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 - 2 Tablespoons instant coffee

Place the bananas, milk and cinnamon in a food processor fitted with a chopping blade. Pulse until creamy.

Add instant coffee and pulse until mixed thoroughly. (Yes, you could add the coffee at the same as the other ingredients, but I find this way more fun.)

Serve in a tall glass. Garnish with a dusting of more coffee. I can't recommend this final touch enough - the crunchy, intense coffee crystals are a great counterpoint to the creaminess of the smoothie.

I've become sufficiently enchanted with this coffee smoothie to think of it as bananas' best use, even when the bananas are perfect and in no need of rehab.

After all, a creamy and icy smoothie can be delightful - even with ice on the ground.

What's a nice farmers market like you doing in a place like this?

The farmers market had some good stuff. 

 

 

Wonderful peaches, both yellow and white. Nectarines. Concord grapes. Apples. Tomatoes. Berries.

The vendors spoke Russian, not that surprising, given that Brighton Beach, New York's most Russian neighborhood, was only about a mile away. But the market's wares were less noteworthy than its location: near the boardwalk of Coney Island, an area more celebrated for freaks than leeks.

(And certainly the food item most emblematic of Coney Island - especially because Coney Island Whitefish isn't actually a food item - is a Nathan's Famous hot dog, still going strong after nearly 100 years.)

I came to Coney Island to watch Minor League baseball: the Brooklyn Cyclones, an affiliate of the NY Mets, were battling their cross-Narrows rivals, the Staten Island Yankees. Wholesome, carefully arranged produce was just about the last thing I expected to encounter in front of the Cyclones' MCU Stadium.

Despite the typical stadium rules against bringing in food, the guard let me bring in my newly purchased produce. "We say no snacks, but I gotta admit you're not going to find fruit in there," he said, jerking a thumb toward the concession stands. Hot dogs and fries were as popular inside the stadium as they were just outside of it.

After the Cyclones lost to the Staten Island Yankees, we took in some of Coney Island's other attractions.

When I last went on the Cyclone. I felt lucky to have my teeth still in my head at the ride's end. But this old-school (circa 1927) rollercoaster has been joined by newer rides like the Thunderbolt, Sling Shot, Zenobie, and Soarin' Eagle, variations on the theme of dropping you from a high point really fast and probably shaking you upside down a couple of times for good measure. While we were watching the game we could see the Thunderbolt car making its way up on the track (and if you go to the game picture above, you can see the ant-like car beginning its vertical path upwards in the upper right-hand corner; the track's super-sharp descent immediately follows). More tellingly, we could follow its path by the passengers' screams, which we had no trouble hearing over the din of the game. (To get a sense of these rides, just click on the respective link for a virtual front row seat on each ride.) 

 
There were no shortage of screams as we strolled around the park, contemplating the long lines and dithering about whether to join them (maybe next time). I was impressed by the sighting of a White Castle tucked in among the rides. Who thought that the experience of being catapulted 150 feet in the air at 90 miles/hour, then twisted into a couple of somersaults, would be enhanced by a greasy burger? 

But to be fair even the lovely farmers market peaches wouldn't be very appealing then either. 


 

The Cult of the Sour Cherry

They're elusive. They're delicate. Their growing season is short. They make a brief appearance in select markets - I counted only a few sightings at the Union Square Greenmarket - and none at all at most gourmet stores. Consequently, their fans, an "almost cultlike following," in the words of the New York Times, have been known to head to farms to pick their own. My sister planned her her backyard garden with them in mind, and has reorganized and replanted repeatedly, hoping for some success.

Just what is about sour cherries that warrants such devotion?

"They are perfect," my sister said when I posed this question to her."Their shape and size are very pleasing. Their flavor is perfectly sweet and sour. Their texture is nice and light, not as dense as sweet cherries, although I like sweet cherries too. If only they weren't so hard to come by."

Sadly, my sister's sour cherry tree looks more like her fig tree than this lush beauty.

So it's off to the market.

For those who blinked and missed the Greenmarket's crop of sour cherries, a pilgrimage must be made to Brighton Beach. Forget hipster Brooklyn enclaves like Gowanus  and Red Hook that are making the "Brooklyn" brand an international shorthand for coolness. For produce lovers, this Russian area is Brooklyn's best neighborhood. This rule applies doubly for enthusiasts of produce that is popular with Eastern Europeans.

In case you're wondering if sour cherries fall into this category, take a look at this UN Food and Agricultural Organization chart (courtesy of Wikipedia) or a rival chart about sour cherry production embedded in this Power Point presentation.

Rank	Country	Sour cherry production in Metric Tonnes
1	Russia	235,000
2	Ukraine	178,000
3	Turkey	140,000
4	Poland	138,000
5	Serbia	116,000
6	USA	98,000
7	Hungary	82,000
8	Germany	80,000
9	Iran	51,000
10	Georgia	15,000
11	Moldova	15,000
12	Belarus	15,000
13	Denmark	14,000
14	Albania	8,200
15	Croatia	7,500

(For those Russians who can't cope with sour cherries' short season, there's always компот (compote). 

Sour cherries fall into two categories: the dark red morello, which have red flesh, and rosy red amarelle, which have pale flesh. (Compare the picture at the top of this blog post with the picture below.)  Montmorency cherries, an amarelle variety, are the most widely sold in the US.  

But how do sour cherries stack up against  "regular" Bing cherries? I bought some of each to find out.

As you can see from the pictures, sour cherries (on the left) are smaller and rounder and a little lighter in color. Their flesh is less dense than the Bing cherries' and their taste is - no surprise here - tangy and and a bit pucker-worthy, less uncomplicatedly sweet than the Bings' taste. Both kinds of cherries were very pleasing. In the interest of being thorough in my research, I ate all of both kinds.

Sour cherries have a different nutritional profile than sweet cherries. They have a little less sugar and fewer calories. Their tart taste is also associated with their high concentration of antioxidants. 

According to researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, sour cherries have "the highest anti-inflammatory content of any food." A roundup of the health benefits of sour cherries by the National College of Natural Medicine is impressive: tumor reduction in parts of the gut; improved quality and duration of sleep (because of sour cherries' melatonin; decreased post-exercise muscle soreness and inflammation; and greater strength following exercise. Choose Cherries, the website of a trade group that promotes sour cherries, lists studies that link sour cherries to reduced risk of heart disease; reduced risk of stroke; reductions in the inflammation associated with arthritis and gout; and reductions in blood cholesterol and triglycerides. The American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry suggested that sour cherries might be helpful in lowering diabetic people's blood sugar levels and increasing insulin production, prompting the author of its announcement to write, "Perhaps George Washington wouldn't have chopped down his father's cherry tree if he knew what chemists now know."  

Of course, before there were chemists analyzing sour cherries' health benefits, there were chefs creating sour cherry delicacies: sour cherry soup (fondly recalled as a summertime treat by my Viennese neighbor Rose), kriek lambic beer, Persian sour cherry-saffron rice, Turkish nectars and syrups, and my husband's favorite dessert, cherry strudel. (He, like other Upper East Siders of a certain vintage, still mourns the loss of the great Mrs. Herbst but gains comfort in the existence of Andre's Cafe and European Bakery.)

And you needn't be from Eastern Europe or Western Asia to appreciate the culinary possibilities: the US has its own ode to sour cherries: cherry pie.

But when you're torn between fried cherry pie pockets and medicinal "superfood" tart cherry powder - a divide that nicely epitomizes our oftentimes crazy approach to food in this country - remember, there's a lovely fruit in there. 

And you don't have to be a cultist to enjoy it.

A Day at the Beach

What does a beach have to do with produce? Everything - if the beach is Brighton Beach!

Brighton Beach is a Brooklyn neighborhood adjacent to the more famous Coney Island. In addition to its lovely and gorgeous mosaic beach (yes, the same South Shore of Long Island beaches that celebrities enjoy in The Hamptons), Brighton offers what New York Magazine called "arguably the most fascinating ethnic enclave in New York," an area in which several waves of Russian immigrants, initially Russian Jews in the 1970s and more recently a mix of Russian Jews and gentiles after the collapse of the Soviet Union, call home.

These are some of New York's most produce-loving people, as a stroll down the neighborhood's main drag, Brighton Beach Avenue, will reveal.

Some fruit vendors, particularly Fancy Farm (across the street from the Brighton Beach branch of the Brooklyn Public Library) are as fancy and beautifully arranged as any gourmet store.

Don't be surprised to see a sea of options, especially for produce items particularly beloved in the Russian community - three kinds of sour cherries, for example.

Does the number 99 contain mystical properties? Nah, these demanding shoppers just enjoy a good value.

Of course, the long Russian winter gives an appreciation for the need to preserve that bounty. Or maybe it's just that pickles are so tasty! Expect your vendor to carry a selection - pickled cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes, etc.

Every now and then you'll see a sign that shows an appreciation for other produce items that wouldn't necessarily get as much love in another community.

Of course, Brighton Beach is still a beach! Not everyone is focusing on the produce. (And to be honest, once I'm on the beach, neither am I.)

Amazingly, this journey is readily accessible via the same subway lines that might take you to Central Park or Rockefeller Center. Or, in my case, home.