Greetings from a Parisian market!

Paris is a fantasy food destination, and its many markets are both a key source of fresh ingredients and a stamping ground for the country’s finest producers. Your shopping visit could be a lazy Sunday wander on your way to brunch, a dedicated food shopping expedition or a gastronomic tour – but no matter what, the sights and smells will make you hungry long before you’re back in the kitchen.

                               --- The Best Paris Food Markets, Time Out magazine

My lucky friend Bethanne has hit the road again, this time visiting her friends Marie and Diego in Paris. I was delighted to receive a large cache of market pictures from her. Amazingly, I didn’t even have to beseech her before her trip! (I probably have beseeched my friends enough to last several lifetimes, much less several trips, so they are now self-policing.)

Some of Paris’ markets originated over 1,000 years ago. The Saxe-Breteuil market, featured in Bethanne’s photos, offers "the city's most chic produce,” according to Time Out.  The market is held twice a week, Thursdays and Saturdays, from 7 am - 2:30 pm, on the Avenue de Saxe in the 7th arrondissement in the Left Bank. 

I chanced upon a website Paris Perfect (one of those glamorous apartment rental websites that makes you moan softly as you read about various lovely neighborhoods with cobbled streets and charming shops), which described the market in these appropriately drool-inducing terms:

Among the many markets in Paris, the Saxe-Breteuil market is often regarded as the most beautiful. There is no more lovely setting, as it is framed by the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides. Farmers and producers come from all over France to sell their specialties and this market is known for its high-quality organic foods.

I immediately searched for sales of the wonderful Charentais melon, which is sometimes known as "French melon" in gourmet stores. (Charentais melons are basically very fragrant and sweet cantaloupes, and apparently contain some super-duper antioxidant, superoxide dismutase, for those folks who prefer to ingest their produce in pill form.) No disappointments here! 

Also expected and found: tributes to luscious end-of-summer tomatoes.

A little more surprising: the inclusion of fruits that are obviously not locally grown – pineapples, kiwis, mangos, bananas - which wouldn’t fly at a typical US farmers’ market.

The Union Square Greenmarket, for example, touts its credentials as “producer-only market with rigorous “grow-your-own” standards… selling directly to customers means farmers, fishers and their children can keep doing what they love and feeding growing cities.” Farmers markets in Washington DC have similar rules. 

But upon further thought, I realized that the French covered market (marché couvert) isn’t like these Johnny-come-lately markets. The Union Square Greenmarket began in 1976, not the 10^th century --- when many of the Parisian markets began. Consequently, the French markets are much more fully integrated into daily life and provide a wider range of essential range of essential foodstuffs to their customers.

And if, for whatever strange personal quirk, you’re not interested in the produce – well, it’s still Paris. Rumor has it there is other beauty to behold.

Greetings from Costa Rica

Do Costa Ricans come to our fruit markets and think, "What the heck is that?"

I wondered about this as I marveled at the variety and novelty of the produce revealed in this photograph taken by my sister at the Mercado Central in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Just one single photo and yet so much to check out.

Up on top: Kiwis, got it. They're probably called "kiwis" in Costa Rica, too. When I traveled around Europe on an Interrail pass after college, "kiwi" was the one constant. If you're "kiwi" in Hungarian, believe me, you're "kiwi" in most languages.

The other easy one, with the center/left position: Mandarina, or mandarin oranges. Even if there's some confusion on the mandarin/orange/clementine front, we're basically on pretty firm ground with the popular citrus fruits.

I also see some pears, cantaloupe and avocado on the top part of the picture, with nary a sign to contradict me.

As we go down the picture things grow a bit more exotic.

In the bottom left corner, we can see the sign for "Pitahaya."  Pitahaya,
more commonly known in the US as dragon fruit, is an outstandingly photogenic fruit so it's a bit of shame to exclude it from this - or any - photo. Still, it's an old friend, with just enough familiarity and strangeness to be the star of our most popular "What the heck is that" blog post.

Another "What the heck is that?" friend, rambutan, is located in the center/bottom of the photograph, and is here called "Mamon Chino," which I learned, thanks to this blog, means "Chinese sucker." I can't wait to incorporate this new insult into my vocabulary! The "sucker" part of the name presumably comes from sucking out the fruit after removing the rambutan's thick, spider-firework peel, although I'm not sure how different that is than eating many other kinds of fruits; the "Chino" comes from rambutan's Asian origins.

Finally, the really exotic. 

Is that a pile of guava on the right side? Does the sign read "Guavahi"? The Spanish word for guava is "guayaba," not "guavahi," which, come to think of it, doesn't seem like a word at all. Come on, fruit vendors in overseas produce markets, take some pity on me and work on that penmanship. In exchange, I'll do a blog post on guava (or its even more mysterious cousin, guavahi) soon.

My heart rate quickened at the sight of the pile of "anona" in the center - they looked just like cherimoya, a luscious tropical fruit that I love. Other tropical fruit with army drab armor include guanabana and many other varieties. Tough skin on the outside, ice cream-like flesh inside. Wise farmers all over the warm world - Central and South America; Northern, Central and Southern Africa; the Middle East; South and Southeastern Asia - grow members of the armored family, whose fruits have inviting names like "sugar apple" and "custard apple." Anonnas, as they are known in English, closely resemble cherimoya but have segmented flesh that hugs the fruit's shiny seeds.

Finally, two kinds of Jocote. According to a description from Tasty Tropical Fruits in Costa Rica, jacote are eaten when unripe (green skin) and fully ripe (red or yellow skin), but the fruit is tart either way: “Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes.” If, for some reason, you want to see some Nicaraguan guys hanging out and eating some jocote, check it out here, and marvel at the full range of possibilities You Tube offers. Jocote seems to be the same fruit as siriguela, one of the sour fruits of Brazil's Northeast featured in my friend-of-friend Isabel's slideshow of Brazilian fruit.

Jacote is a fruit which looks like a small deformed golfball and its colors range from green to yellow to red. The fruit can be eaten both when its skin is green and unripe as well as once it has matured and turned red or yellow. Ripe and unripe alike, the fruit maintains a tartness to its flavor. Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes. It is also possible to eat the skin of this fruit as well!
- See more at: http://www.schooloftheworld.org/tasty-tropical-fruits-in-costa-rica/#sthash.j3JJvjkp.dpuf

Jacote is a fruit which looks like a small deformed golfball and its colors range from green to yellow to red. The fruit can be eaten both when its skin is green and unripe as well as once it has matured and turned red or yellow. Ripe and unripe alike, the fruit maintains a tartness to its flavor. Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes. It is also possible to eat the skin of this fruit as well!
- See more at: http://www.schooloftheworld.org/tasty-tropical-fruits-in-costa-rica/#sthash.j3JJvjkp.dpuf

Jocote isn't just another tart, Vitamin C laden fruit in Costa Rica: a jocote tree served hosting duties in April 1842 for the peace treaty that overturned the government of Barulio Carrillo. The treaty became known as the "Pacto del Jacote."  Take that, cherry tree that George Washington allegedly cut down!

Whew. That was a lot of information in one photo! Of course, plenty of questions remain. I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the prices, thoughtfully included in the photo. At 532.90 Costa Rican colon to $1 US, the price of 2,500 is $4.75, the cost per kilo for ripe jocote, dragon fruit and rambutan. Cheaper still are the unripe jocote at 1,000 colon/kilo. Why so much cheaper if both varieties are tart? A good question. Anonas are less than half the cost (1200/kilo) of the rambutan, etc., which strikes me as an incredible bargain. 

The real question: how soon could I get there?