What the heck is that? Thomcord grapes

Shouldn’t hybrid fruit have the best attributes of their parents?

That was my thought when I tried Thomcord table grapes, a hybrid developed in the 1980s by California grape breeders (and reportedly tinkered with over the next two decades).

This exotic hybrid is the offspring of two extremely common grapes. Thompson grapes are the world’s most popular snacking and raisin variety. Concord grapes, gorgeously purple, are the mainstay of PB&J grape jam, grape juice, cut-with-a-scissors cut-with-scissors sweet kosher wine, and “grape” in whatever candies and soda that choose natural alternatives to blue dye and synthetic flavorings.

Obviously missing on Concord’s honor roll: eating out of hand raw, aka snacking. Concord grapes are not only strikingly attractive, they’re fabulously fragrant and very flavorful. But Concords also have thick skins and pits. I’ve eaten them at farmer’s markets and in the backyards of New Yorkers who are lucky of them to have them growing “wild” (or more likely, planted by the person who lived in their house before them). They’re fragile and usually susceptible to blight and consequently expensive. 

The obvious goal: make the gorgeous but temperamental Concord as practical and saleable as the Thompson. Here's one account of the Thomcord's origin story:

What are Thomcords? The tastiest grapes you’ve never heard of. Like Concord grapes, they’re juicier and more intensely grape-flavored than the red or green grapes you can buy year-round. But Concords have small, crunchy seeds, which may explain why they often end up as grape juice or jelly. Enter USDA’s grape-breeding scientists. In 1983, they crossed Thompson (seedless green) grapes with Concords…then spent nearly two decades fine-tuning the hybrid. The result: the seedless sweetness of a green grape with the plump, grapey flesh of a Concord.

 The Thomcord were certainly gorgeous - as plump and grapey-fleshed as promised.

And they were indeed seedless as well. And their skin was not as tough as the Concord's. 

But -- and perhaps this could explain the nearly two decades of tinkering, though not its termination -- Thomcord grapes tasted terrible! 

It was as if flavor somehow got dropped from the breeder's checklist. 

The heady, winy complexity of the Concord grape - the attribute that caused my friend Jen to declare that "Concord grapes make your taste buds sing" - was flattened out, leaving only a random grape with a weird aftertaste. 

What a disappointment! This practical, shippable, saleable, affordable grape didn't even measure up to the simple, sweet joys of its other parent, the Thompson.

I had no reason to snack on the carton of Thomson grapes, so I sought redemption via my go-to method of bringing out the best in substandard fruit: roasting.

These Thomcord grapes might have been the best-looking fruit I have ever subjected to heat therapy: candidates for caramelization typically include the withered and blemished. But these guys needed something drastic to make eating them worthwhile.

Out came the pan.

But as it turns out, while roasting can smooth out a mealy texture and coax out sweetness from underripe specimens, even this miracle worker can't take away a developed, unprepossessing flavor.

Roasting gave me sticky, sweeter Thomcord grapes that were still saddled with a charmless aftertaste.

Performers who decide not to tamper with their quirky looks are sometimes derided as superstitious, but perhaps they are on to something: smoothing out inconvenient, non-conforming or unconventional traits doesn't always lead to success. 

Maybe we just need to appreciate the Concord in all its prima donna glory.

Ode to Rossman Farms

I've been away for less than a week and I'm feeling the pangs of withdrawal.

This blog has featured produce markets in the Philippines, Morocco, Mexico, Columbia, and other locations. Here's a market a little closer to home. 

Rossman Farms is located on a gritty corner on the outskirts of Sunset Park in Brooklyn. "Brooklyn" is sometimes used as brand or a shorthand term for a certain kind of artisinal authenticity, but this patch of Brooklyn under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway overpass features porn shops and live poultry sales, along with schools, a church and an astonishing mix of residential and industrial uses. Rossman occupies the whole building, which enables them to buy in bulk and store their cheaply obtained produce. 

Not everything is cheap, but sometimes the prices are jaw dropping.

Granted, I inadvertently stuck my finger in one pear's oozing wound and squealed as if I had been stuck myself. Yuck! I tossed the offending pear out and continued to fill my bag. Velvety roasted pears, the solution to When Bad Produce Happens to Good People/pear division, awaited. Roasting (the blemished and wizened) and freezing (the about-to-be-overripe) were the fates I had in mind for several specimens of Rossman's clearance sale area. I normally never bother with produce sale graveyards, since many vendors typically hold on to produce until the point of rot. I've bought only lightly from Rossman's sale bin, but I enjoy checking it out every time I'm in the store. I was pleasantly surprised to see some broccoli, baby arugula and mandarin oranges in the sale area that were in very good shape, requiring no ingenuity to make them palatable. Part of the game is guessing the outlandishly cheap price for the good stuff. 

Most of my shopping at Rossman's is more mainstream, taking advantage of the store's appreciation of New York's glorious diversity. Eavesdrop on Rossman's owners, and hear them slip effortlessly between Hebrew, Spanish and English. Muslims in traditional garb make up a significant portion of their customer base, and Mexicans looking for nopales, tomatillos and poblano peppers are doted upon. 

And of course I also take advantage of the regular crop of nice vegetables.

Did I mention that Rossman never closes? It's open 24 hours every day of the year. You never know when you need that parsnip.

I checked out the store's Yelp reviews to see if I was alone in my enchantment. There was some grumbling - this is New York, after all - but also paeans like these: 

A fresh vegetable & fruit stand in the middle of factories and industrial buildings, Rossman offers a large array of fresh fruit and vegetables at a low cost. The fruit & vegetables outside is usually days away from going bad so that's where you'll find the cheapest prices. Thanks to Ross I've eaten fruit I never knew existed, I'm opening my horizons lol. -- Chica O

I finally discovered Rossman's (thanks, Yelp) and what a blissful discovery it has been. The location is certainly a bit peculiar-desolate 3rd Ave with its adult video and liquor stores -- but provides ample room for a really good selection of fruits and veggies. As others have noted, I was astonished by how far $20 went here. The 24 hour/all credit cards accepted bit is icing on the cake.   -- Lydia N.

Mike Rossman is a Fruits & Vegetables Genius. He has built an empire that takes the best produce from all over the world. And the prices are surprisingly very low even if one compares them to Brighton Beach area or Ave U or Chinatown  in Brooklyn. [Editorial note: We know Chinatown and Brighton Beach, but we obviously must check out Avenue U!] This is my new favorite one-stop shop for a great fruit - vegetable shopping. I highly recommend this place to everyone I know. Superb job, Mike!  --Kosta R.

I can't wait to go back.

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.

  .

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.

When Mediocre Produce Happens to Good People - Zucchini

Who knew that Rob Zombie  and his wife Sherri Moon were vegans?

Once I absorbed that information, I was stuck by another odd tidbit from an interview the Zombies gave to Vegan Health & Fitness magazine. When asked for a favorite vegan dish, Sherri suggested grilled zucchini.

Zucchini? Really? This is your vegan proselytizing food? 

Well, perhaps some tender young zucchini, fresh from the market, might win some converts. 

But what about the oversize, bloated, woody and seedy zucchini baseball bats that you find this time of year?

For those less prepossessing specimens, simple grilling is not enough. You'll need a cooking method that prevents rubbery texture and waterlogged flavor. 

I recommend this one: grating the zucchini then sauteing it with mint and a representative of the garlic/onion family.

First, the grating & sauteing. This is the best way to deal with the soggy mess that autumn zucchinis can become. Break down those cell walls! Liberate that liquid (to destroy it). The one-two punch of grating and sauteing really concentrates the zucchini's flavor.

Next, the seasoning. Any kind of allium could work - finely chopped onions, garlic, scallions, red onion, chives, garlic scapes, etc. 

Just make sure it's very finely diced. And I finally found something worthwhile to do with the fresh mint I've been growing in my garden, much more dignified work than serving as a soon-to-be-discarded garnish. You'll need a handful of mint, coarsely chopped. Also key, and omitted at your own peril: a pinch or two of salt.

The recipe is simple, with just a few ingredients, but omit any and you will be denied the glory of the dish. The recipe is also very forgiving. The zucchini can be limp and none too fresh. Spare only the rotten and moldy. The allium can be a stray clove or two of garlic, or the leftover quarter of an onion you used for sandwiches. We should all be so tolerant!


Zucchini with Some-Kind-of-Allium & Mint:

Ingredients:

2 or 3 zucchini or summer squash, blossom and stem ends removed, grated

Garlic cloves, garlic scape blossoms, onion, chives, shallot or other member of the allium family, very finely diced to yield 1 Tablespoon (garlic family) - 2 Tablespoons (onion family), or more to taste 

Handful of fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped, or 1 teaspoon dried mint
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions: 

Spray a cast iron skillet or other frying pan with a film of oil, or more oil if desired. Saute onions or garlic for 30-50 seconds over medium heat, then add the grated zucchini and salt. Mix thoroughly to avoid scorching, adding a small amount of water if necessary.

Continue stirring, pressing down on zucchini mixture to release liquid. If using dried mint, add it now.

After a few minutes, zucchini will extrude liquid. If using fresh mint, add it now. Raise the flame under the pan to encourage the released liquid to evaporate. (You may be astonished by just how much liquid escapes - I know I was - but you'll be glad you let that flavor-dilutor go.) The whole cooking time should take you around 5 minutes.

Once the zucchini mixture appears dry, give it a final stir and serve.

Use the zucchini as a side dish or as a topping for bruschetta. I also find that the combination of flavorful zucchini and crunchy radish, sliced thin, brings out the best in both components. 

I've become fond enough of this dish to think of it as the best way to serve zucchini -- even when it isn't mediocre.

When Bad Produce Happens to Good People - Fuyu Persimmons

Sometimes my Produce Proselytizing goes way beyond my expectations.  
Of all the fruits I've talked up, none has become more popular among my friends than fuyu persimmons.

Some of this success is due to the very real charms of the fuyus themselves. Once sampled, these sweet, flavorful fruits can easily become favorites. (And unlike hachiya persimmons, fuyus aren't bitter and astringent when hard.)  This time of year, most fruit stands include a fuyu display. Fuyus are also pretty cheap, encouraging experimentation and frequent purchases.

My friend Lol identified yet another factor in her own growing fondness for fuyus. As she told me, “Ever since you introduced me to these persimmons, I can't get enough of them! And they're good in so many stages of ripeness. I like them hard like apples – and when they're super-soft, like pudding. And I like them in every stage in between.”

Despite my enthusiasm, I am not quite so tolerant of all fuyu candidates. 

I like fuyus only in the hard-like-apple stage. If they get a bit soft, I have to slice the fruit very thinly - and sometimes I have to dust them with cinnamon - in order to make them palatable. In theory, I could cut a too-soft fuyu in half and scoop the flesh out with a spoon -- many people's preferred way of eating them, as it happens. But in practice, I am more likely to make a gift of the fruit to someone who actually likes 'em soft rather than gussy them up to make them merely tolerable.

Some fuyu persimmons can challenge the inclusive love of even an open-minded enthusiast like Lol. These dinged-up fruit, for example.

I can avoid buying persimmons that look like this at the time of purchase, but I haven't managed to avoid bad fuyus entirely. It's my own fault:  I have occasionally bought so many fuyus that some of them have inevitably gotten forgotten in the back of the fridge or in the bottom of a backpack. When finally discovered, the fuyus' firmness has become a hazy memory, and I'm left with fuyus no better than ones I would have shunned.

So there any hope for these dented, bruised persimmons?

 

One option I explored was a kick-the-can-forward cryonics. I simply froze the fuyus to delay further decay while I hoped that a better plan would come to mind.

Just chillin'

I was inspired by the idea of freezing overripe bananas for smoothies (seldom made by me, but you might like them) or sweet bread (ditto, but here's a nice recipe for persimmon bread). But unlike slender and easily chopped frozen bananas, frozen whole fuyus are like baseballs. If you plan persimmon bread or smoothies, I suggest you pulp the fuyus before freezing. And if you want to use them in pancakes or oatmeal (my tip for bad blueberries), I suggest dicing them.
  
I was left with one plausible alternative for my sad fuyu baseballs: baking them whole. I decided to use the same technique for their squishy, unfrozen kin (even though I had the pulping and dicing options for them).

I like to add cinnamon to anything baked, so I installed a fuyu in a ramekin and then dusted the ramekin with cinnamon.

I added a bit of water for a nice brown bath. I already had the oven engaged at 375 degrees for another baking project, and I popped the fuyu dish in. I added a little more water after 15 minutes, and pulled the dish out after about 25 - 30 minutes in the oven. My persimmons sported cinnamon rings around their midriffs, corresponding to the water level. I tried not to think of bathtub rings.

 
I had kept the fuyus' leafy tops in place before baking for practical reasons. They would be tough to remove on the frozen guys and their removal would make the squishy fruit even messier. But they ended up adding a pleasing note. Baked and burnished, the tops enhanced the autumn glow of the baked fruit. The tops came out easily when I cut the fuyus in half.

I enjoyed the appearance of the persimmons' dense orange flesh, a big improvement of their squishy dented selves. But never mind appearances. What about taste? There was good news on this front. The baked fuyus had dense, honeyed flesh and a taste that embodied many great fall flavors: sweet potato, pumpkin and baked apple. Dignity restored!

And if Lol ever determines that some fuyus actually don't pass muster, she'll have yet another way to love her persimmons.

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.

When Bad Produce Happens to Good People - Watermelon

This is not a tale of the cunning redeployment of substandard produce - tasteless blueberries, withered grapes or never-gonna-ripen pears.

Rather, this is the Curious Case of the Exploding Watermelon.

It's also a contender for My Most Disgusting Produce Story, poised to dethrone the current champion, the tale which begins with my college roommate Kumi preparing some crudites in a lidded box for her Japanese class's midyear party. In June, I discovered the box when I was clearing out our dorm room. I guessed that the orange liquified bits had begun their lives as carrots, the pale green ones, celery. As for the darker green ones - sugar snap peas? String beans? I was too too busy gagging to make it interesting with a wagering pool. (Kumi, safely back in California by then, naturally found the story hilarious. She still does.)

This new story begins with a nice watermelon that looked like this:

When I set it aside for 2 days, my worst fear was that it was under-ripe and wouldn't taste very good.

Clearly, my fears lacked imagination and ambition. When I went to cut it up last night, the watermelon looked like this:

"Gee, my watermelon looks like it's taking a swim in a lake that could catch on fire," I thought cheerfully. "But who would put viscous water in the bowl?"

The next thought was dawning horror.

I grabbed a doubled trash bags and dumped the bowl's contents into the bags.

Normally I a pretty committed composter, but at times like this I am grateful for my dishwasher and my building's trash chute (one of the delights of apartment living). 


If you have a delicate stomach, you might want to skip to the end of this blog post. The watermelon had become truly revolting. Its rind collapsed and the watermelon's insides came pouring out.

The liquid was everywhere, damaging the wood of the furniture the mat was on, wetting (but mercifully not causing lasting harm) a fancy lamp, and in generally making a colossal mess. 

"Wow, that looks like the scene of a crime!" a friend said when I showed him the pictures.

What happened here?

According to a blog post called "Why Do Watermelons Crack, Split and Explode?",

As soon as a fresh plant is removed from its host plant or reaches maturity, it begins to very slowly break down. Heat accelerates this process. 

As it breaks down, a colorless gas called acetylene forms inside the water melon. The gas is volatile and quite unstable while in gas form (which is why when it's used in scientific experiments it's usually used in liquid form.)

The gas will try its best to escape the water melon but as it slowly increases due to the rotting in the water melon, the pressure will continue to increase.

When the skin of the watermelon is no longer strong enough to hold the gas inside, it will explode, often spraying all nearby surfaces with rotten water melon. Sometimes a trip home from the shop in a warm car is the final catalyst required to create an explosion.

Despite the disgusting scene at my house, I feel we got off easy. Just Google a phrase like "exploding rotten watermelon" and you'll see videos with watermelon bits on the ceiling and comments about the worst smell in the world. My watermelon didn't stink and I didn't have to destroy the carpet and the floorboards underneath.

Because of this, I could be more tolerant. Don't we all explode at times? 

So even if this isn't a redemptive tale, at least it has a happy ending: watermelon and I are still friends. Now excuse me while I bite into this instant refreshment.