jaboticaba

The jaboticaba is a very cool fruit. Sure, it looks like grapes there, but look at this photo from Wikipedia:

See, the fruits grow directly on the trunk of the tree. And although the skin is thick and slightly tannic like a slipskin grape (fox, Concord, muscadine), the inside is soft and custardy, and similar to lychee or mangosteen in flavor. The seed is soft, a little bitter, a little mealy - certainly something you can eat if you want, and that's not going to break any fillings.

When eaten whole, the fruit is somewhat grape-like in flavor - the skin tarter and more tannic than the sweet innards, everything kind of balancing out. Alternately you can pop the innards into your mouth for something more tropical-tasting. You can see the innards in some of the burst fruit here, before I washed and sorted them:

The skins can be dried and used to make tea - it's not bad, though not very strong flavored unless you use a lot of them, or maybe I should be boiling the skins instead of just steeping them.

The fruit starts to ferment pretty quickly, even in the refrigerator - this is why there's been no attempt to sell jaboticaba on a wide scale in the US. (That, and the trees grow slowly, so it's a long time before you get a useful amount of fruit from them.) In fact, when I tried to candy some of the fruits using the usual method - soaking them in a sugar syrup and increasing the concentration of sugar every day while the fruit absorbs it - I wound up instead with a container full of slightly carbonated jaboticaba wine.

So with the candying failed, what did I do with these other than just eat them? Jjam and Jgin, of course.

fly me courageous

I know they look nice, but this actually wasn't the best year for strawberries, especially when a container of locals costs six bucks.  They just don't have the full flavor of previous years -- they're still strawberries, they're still good, but I elected not to make strawberry jam this year, for instance.  It's expensive to make since the way I make it is like 90% berries, so I'm just going to use up other jams from other seasons instead.

However.  Like I said: they're still strawberries.  There are still things to do.  While I ate most of this year's berries plain, on ice cream, or with yogurt for breakfast, there's also this:

Strawberry-Chartreuse Sorbet.

Macerate sliced berries with sugar.  That just means toss them with sugar and let them set a few hours, stirring once in a while.  Blend berries and more sugar -- taste it; does it taste as sweet as sorbet? add sugar until it tastes a little sweeter than that -- and add a little Green Chartreuse.  How little?  Use the Chartreuse the way you would vanilla extract.  Chartreuse and strawberries just go real nicely together.

Blend, freeze, kapow.

What else goes with strawberries?  Campari!  As you can tell, this photo from 2008 was taken on an overcast day, so the red's not popping, but this ain't a photoblog:

Those are strawberries in Limonata gelatin, stuffed with Campari.  I don't have proportions for you here, because I did it by ear, but essentially:

Proof gelatin by sprinkling it on some Campari; heat up just enough water or Campari to dissolve that gelatin so that you have a Campari jello.

Remove tops from strawberries and hollow them out.  Fill with the Campari jello and crowd the strawberries together in a container with sides, so that they're all keeping each other upright.

Proof gelatin in Pellegrino Limonata soda -- or Orangina or Sun Drop or Dr Enuf or what have you -- and add heated soda to dissolve that gelatin.  As you can see, I made this gelatin softer than the Campari gelatin -- I wanted it to just sort of cling to the strawberries.  Pour the Limonata gelatin into the sided container so that it comes partway up the strawberries.  Chill the whole deal and allow to set.

But what goes best with strawberries?

Honestly, I've found nothing better than Vic Cherikoff's Australian Fruit Spice blend.  It's ridiculously expensive because of the shipping cost from Australia, but you can make it last a long time.  Sprinkled on melon or strawberries, the blend of forestberry herb, sumac, forest anise, and mountain pepper (indigenous Australian spices, apart from the sumac) highlights the berry notes of the fruit without covering anything up.  It's a crazy synergy, and I wish I had more of the stuff, and could find it more cheaply.

if you want to go where they chain up the sun

Anyone who knows me outside this blog knows that I love citrus fruit.  I mean, my love for it is kind of ridiculous.  Sure, yes, an orange is terrific, or a grapefruit half for breakfast, or some key lime pie.  Lemonade iced tea, aka half and half, aka the Arnold Palmer, depending on where you live.  Margaritas, made correctly with fresh lime juice, not some weird bottled mix.  And so on.

But I tend to take it further.  My love of citrus approaches reverence.  Unfortunately, I live in New Hampshire.  There is not much variety, and too often what you find on the shelves is dry or bland.  Even in the best case scenarios, it's waxed, which is a nuisance if, like me, you regularly candy fruit or use it in liqueurs.

Last year, flush with a wider and woolier revenue stream than I currently enjoy, I bought citrus from several different orchards, the highlights of which were the variety assortments from Friends Ranches and the many offerings from Rising C Ranches (aka Ripe To You, mentioned in the comment discussion about yuzu, which in fact I've now ordered).  This is not a "free stuff" post or anything -- there are a LOT of online citrus sources out there, and these happen to be the two I've had the most luck with.  Friends has particularly good prices, relative to the quality and variety; Ripe To You's selling point is the exotic citrus fruit they sell that few other people do.

For instance, last year, in addition to some lemons, oranges, and grapefruit, I bought Rangpur limes, limequats, Bergamot oranges, Seville oranges, kaffir limes, and a wide variety of mandarin oranges.  I also bought these, which I've picked up again this year:

Calamondin are also known as kalamansi, though I've heard some rumbling that they're not the exact same thing; maybe they're two very similar varieties, I don't know.  (I have bought fruit labeled as each, and the distinctive flavor is there in both, but it is true that the fruit sold as kalamansi was noticeably smaller than the fruit sold as calamondin.)  It might well be my favorite citrus fruit -- which logically makes it my favorite fruit, and thus my favorite food.

Bill, what the hell is a calamondin, you're thinking.

Well, it looks like a small orange, as you can see.  The peel is sweet and edible, like a kumquat, and it's a hybrid between a kumquat and an unknown species.  There are a whole bunch of kumquat hybrids -- limequats are obvious in their parentage -- but the calamondin stands out as having its own distinct flavor.  I've described it to people as "like a cross between a tangerine and a lime," but that isn't quite right (and besides, it also describes the Rangpur lime).  It gets you on the right track, though -- there is definitely a "tangerine-ness" to the flavor.  It's nearly as tart as lemons and limes -- technically you can eat it out of hand, but it'll make your mouth pucker like a Warhead.  (I do it anyway.)  It's not until you juice it and try to substitute the juice for lemon or lime juice that you realize it's not quite as sour as them, and that if you're using it in a cocktail, you'll need slightly less sweetener.

It does make fantastic cocktails, in fact.  I've been working on a "winter margarita" using seasonal citrus and winter-appropriate spices, but it's not ready for the public yet; suffice to say a couple drafts have been made with calamondin juice.  

What it goes terrifically with is Aperol.  I'll probably have a post on Aperol later, but it's a potable bitter (Amaro) like Campari, only slightly less bitter, slightly more sweet, and with a far more pronounced orange flavor.  The "homemade Campari" I made a few years ago was in fact very similar to Aperol, I just didn't know it at the time.  Anyway, Aperol and calamondin juice -- nothing else, no filler like club soda, no need for sugar, just adjust until the sugar in the Aperol balances out the acid in the juice -- is pretty damn amazing, and though I had planned to freeze some of the calamondin juice ... it may not make it.

What else can you do with calamondin?  Marmalade, of course, and you can candy them -- I have a number I'm candying, and after juicing the calamondins, I've been candying the leftover peels as well, to add to yogurt.

the mayor of simpleton

This is a short post about a big area: candied fruit.  It's short because I can't improve on, nor claim as my own, these instructions for the basic two-week process of candying fruit.  That said, there are many ways to do it, and if some other method sounds better to you, go for it.

I've been candying fruit for years, and not to toot my own horn, but I play around with it more than I have seen others do.  So these are my comments on it in general:

1: Citrus performs terrifically.  Berries don't.  Apples, pears, and quince don't -- they become all sweetness with no flavor.  The basic process here replaces all of the water in the fruit with a very rich sugar syrup, which makes for a very sweet product, and not all flavors stand up to that.  Pineapple and cherries are the best non-citrus options.  I kinda think it's not coincidence that the typical mix of fruit in a fruitcake is ... citrus, pineapple, and cherry.

2: Chile peppers perform very well.  I've made several "tropical boomcakes" -- fruitcakes flavored with slices of candied habanero and pineapple, rum, ginger, and cinnamon.  Using habanero, it's not hard to make a fruitcake that's spicier than any commercial product this side of hot sauce.  But jalapeno and other chiles have great flavors that go well with sweetness.  Last year I made "jalapeno poppers," using candied whole jalapenos, filled with a ganache of caramelized white chocolate and Seville orange rind.

3: There is no reason the syrup cannot have flavor in it.

That's what I mean by doing more than I've seen other people do.  It started with saffron-flavored candied pineapple, when I was first experimenting with sweet applications of saffron five years ago (best results: saffron/vanilla bean ice cream, or saffron dulche de leche baked into the top of brownies).  I've used ginger in the syrup for candying habanero, and made a reasonable jar of sugar plums using "Christmas spices" to flavor small candied plums.

The above photo is of two examples: a lemon slice candied with tea infused syrup, which will probably find its way into a lemonade cake; and my pride and joy, the Coca Cola cherry.

Imagine the cherry orchard behind Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, some years after its acquisition by the Coca-Cola Company.  You pick a fresh, tart, Balaton cherry, and take a bite.  It tastes like Cherry Coke, but -- not quite.  Because the cherry element, the fruit flavor, tastes not like Hubba Bubba bubblegum but like a real, fresh cherry -- and somehow all the Coca-Cola flavor is there too.

It's pretty fucking great.  I just used Coca-Cola fountain syrup as my candying syrup, and boosted it with sugar until the cherries became candied.  Think of the soda that the leftover syrup will make!

You can also make very simple "sour patch" candies by taking candied fruit that has been taken out of the syrup and left to dry some, and then rolling it in a combination of granulated sugar and citric acid.

There's a lot of potential down this road.

sandals in the snow

I know I know, you want to know what the mystery fruit is.  I didn't mean to leave you hanging.

This is a quenepa, which is called a million different things in different places.  It's a tropical fruit which looks a little like a lychee here, but what looks like a luscious solid fruit is actually a thin coating of fruit pulp around a thick seed that can be roasted like a chestnut (though I haven't done that).  You peel the fruit open (easily done, just like with lychees and similar fruit), pop it into your mouth, suck the pulp off, and spit the seed out.  Though there's very little pulp in the fruit, it's so flavorful that you don't notice -- it's as sweet and tart and intense as passion fruit, with a sort of "tropical punch" flavor.  I have, naturally, added a bunch of it to vodka to make liqueur.

As for this mystery?

Fresh dates.

Dates go through various stages of ripeness, and at the khalal stage, they're crisp like apples -- though tarter and noticeably astringent.  Tasty, but you're not going to eat a bowl of them on their own.  These are specifically Mariana dates in the khalal stage.  They continue to ripen on their own, hitting the rutab stage, at which point they become so soft they're almost liquid, and melt in your mouth, tasting a lot like vanilla caramels.  I assume if I leave them long enough, they'll become the dry dates you're familiar with from the supermarket.

As for why I bought fresh dates, well.  That's what I do.  That's how I learn to cook.