Seasonal Produce Disorder

Saucyman, Lots of restaurant menus refer to "seasonal ingredients". How does the average home cook find out what's in season and what's been flown in from halfway around the world? - Thinking local but might be eating global

There are some basic imperatives to seasonality: Asparagus and artichokes in the early spring followed by leeks, greens and strawberries. Summer shifts to corn, tomatoes and cherries before closing out with peaches. Fall is the cornucopia -peppers, squashes, mushrooms, apples and pears among others. Winter is all potatoes, citrus and thoughts of warmer days.

As inartful as the term ‘seasonal ingredients’ is, Saucyman would like to give the writers the benefit of the doubt. Putting together a descriptive sentence is challenging, running a business is difficult and managing a kitchen can be draining so hopefully the appearance of phrase ‘seasonal ingredients’ was meant to be intentionally vague to allow some flexibility in planning the menu. Cynically, these words could be on a menu to connote a level of sophistication that doesn't exist. Certain words appear on menus to capitalize on a restauranty equivalent of buzzword bingo – in the business world the triple-pleated call meetings and announce: “We need a sea change if we are going leverage the Web 2.0 synergy into a viral paradigm shift” – in the food world market, local, free-range, grass-fed, organic and the always classic fresh are (excuse me) value-added expressions.

A good waiter can help bridge the gap between what the kitchen understands and what you are left wondering about but grocery shopping can require extra knowledge to make seasonal selections. First you can do is read: This is a very basic national guide. Additionally, magazines and newspapers’ food sections frequently run articles on what is available in the stores. There are books - nothing is sexier than a well-used library card: Alice Waters has spent the majority of her publishing career helping people understand when something is in season and what to do with it. The enjoyable and informative Russ Parsons has a great book, How to Pick a Peach, laid out in seasonal chapters. The book is pretty Cali-centric as far as produce goes but California drives our fresh fruit and veg markets, so understanding how varieties are selected provides a good understanding how items appear in our markets.

If you are more of the hands-on type than one to fill your head with words and book knowledge, you can walk through a local farmers’ market and/or try your hand at gardening. There are now about 4,000 farmers’ markets in the States, meaning if you reside in an urban area or college town, you should be able to trip into one on any Saturday morning - just follow dood with the Birkenstocks under his socks and French Roast in a travel mug (For more specific help follow this link) Even if you don’t end up pumping some of your dollars or debits into the local farming community, taking in the displays will give a sense of what is available from the fields during any given week.

Gardening gives you the first hand knowledge to yell that ‘the crook neck baby squash is most certainly not seasonal’ at your server, with complete confidence. Gardening isn’t for the feint – hours of backbreaking work, a major capital investment in equipment and a malevolent obsession with herbivores in exchange for a few moments of solitary pleasure spent with a sun warmed tomato. Gardening does give a person firsthand knowledge on how painstaking it is to grow food in addition to imparting the knowledge of what is seasonal down to an hour-by-hour basis.

As for the more bewildering issue of foods from around the world, tune in for the next Saucyman and we will address the country of origin issue.

Strawberry Meals Occasionally

Dear Saucyman, I love fruit- fresh, in pies, cobblers, clafoutis, etc... but I can't stand it when faced with a watery strawberry dipped in waxy chocolate. Why ruin both the chocolate and the berry like that? Please make it stop. – Perplexed.

I’m not sure I have the ability to stop strawberries and chocolate from being used together. I don’t enjoy the combination either but if I did possess some sort of superpower to stop things culturally I would use it to stop Kobe Bryant traveling every time he touches the basketball – he is talented enough that he doesn’t need a special interpretation of the rules. And I would definitely stop that voiceover guy from saying “In a far away land…” at the beginning of every freakin' foreign film trailer they show at the movies.

But personal fiats are not the issue at hand rather what you find to be the unseemly marriage of strawberry and chocolate. While the two flavors that might not taste good together is essentially a matter of preference, it is compounded by the fact that strawberries, notably the California varieties which are selected so they can be grown 11 months a year and be able to withstand picking, packing and up to 4 days in a truck to reach their destination don’t taste like much of anything. From this perspective dipping flavorless red fruit into chocolate actually improves the berry.

The best thing you can do to stop the berry/chocolate atrocity is buy local. California growers dominate the market (20% worldwide) but strawberries can be grown anywhere. Your area farmers are going to serve up the freshest, most flavorful, juiciest berry - one that doesn’t need to be masked in layers of chocolate. Besides garnering the best berries available in your zipcode, you will be supporting local agriculture. Berries, strawberries in particular are a major cash infusion for small-scale farmers; strawberry farms as small as 10 acres can provide a year’s worth of profits.

Buying local reduces strawberries to a seasonal treat, which is kind of harsh – consumers expect berries year around and personally - come February, March and April when there really isn’t that much going on in the local fruit scene, that big, cumulus strawberry means so much more than the fruit itself. Even if those strawberries are as billowy and flavorful as a cloud, that burst of color is a promise that easier, kinder days are just around the corner and buying a pint is like the produce equivalent of buying a lottery ticket, for a nominal fee you allow yourself to dream about how things could be different.

Beyond staying local and seasonal you personally can work to eradicate the need to dip berries in chocolate. Pie is good, strawberries baked in a pastry with acidic rhubarb (found in stores about the same time) draws out the flavor of even the lamest berry. If rhubarb is cost or flavor prohibitive, try lemon juice or even better, balsamic vinegar. The vinegar contrasts the berry’s sweet notes and the dark color of the balsamic really helps set the red color, possibly even improve it.

Instead of whip cream, try Sauce Romanoff – 1 part Sour Cream to 3 parts Chantilly (Sweetened Whipped Cream). Serve Angel food cake instead of the baking powder biscuits. Try brown sugar or honey to sweeten the strawberries rather than white sugar. And booze, an Orange Liqueur like Grand Mariner, or a flavored brandy like kirsch or framboise has never hurt a less than ideal strawberry. The more active you are in helping people understand strawberries can be good without a chocolate coating, the better your world becomes.



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Rugged Avocadoist

How does one know when an avocado is ready for use in say, a burrito? – Darth


A little squeeze is the best indicator: All varieties of avocados ripen from the broad end and the stem softens last. So give it a little squeeze about half way between the thickest part and the stem - the avocado should react to your touch, give a little but not completely cave in at the slightest the pressure. If your touch leaves a dent it is still useable but might be better suited for guacamole.

Avocados have a few odd characteristics – they are part of that list that sounds a bit like a Jeopardy category - Fruits used as vegetables, “What are olives, Alex”. The fruit doesn’t ripen on the tree, it is only after the avocado is picked the ripening process begins. In effect it is stored on the tree, picked hard, shipped and will ripen completely within a week of having been plucked from the branch.

Although the list sounds collectively like the cast of a PBS children’s show: Bacon, Fuerte, Lulu, Pinkerton, Reed and Zutano, these are in fact the names of some of Avocado’s lesser know varieties. Some are green and smooth, some oval, most are contoured in the familiar pear form and occasionally you will find a ‘Cocktail Avocado’ - pickle shaped and seedless but mostly stores carry the Hass. 85% to 95% of what California ships to market is the pebbly black skinned Hass Avocado, and with some exceptions from growers in Florida, Texas and a few imports, California is supplier to the domestic market.

The Hass was a spontaneous generation, every Hass tree descended from a single progenitor - first cultivated in the mid-1920s & patented in 1935. The variety quickly became dominant because of its high yields and shipability. Unlike other fruits and vegetables that are prevalent in the market because they hold up well during transportation and have a long shelf life: The Hass actually tastes good. It could be the fat talking: all avocado varieties are rich in fat, about 30% - equivalent to the fat content of whipping cream.

Rather than trying to find a perfect avocado in the store, buy them hard. You can soften a hard avocado by heating it but this doesn’t ripen the fruit and some find the the taste egg-y: like a vegetal flan but not in a good way. If you need to accelerate the ripening process, place the fruits in a paper bag on a countertop (adding an ethylene-emitting banana to the bag will speed the process more). Once the avocado is ripe, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to five days. Because of the high fat content you can freeze the avocado flesh. Although the flavor won’t suffer, the texture will and if wasn’t going to be used as guacamole going into the freezer, it will by the time it thaws out.

Good luck staying burrito ready, Darth.

Easter Peeps

Easter food conventions seem disjointed from the purpose of the day - dying eggs, hiding eggs and then hunting for them under the ruse a giant rabbit put them in the grass them, chocolate bunnies, brunching and candy laden baskets and peeps - An odd conglomeration which always struck me a bunch of seasonal habits in search of a ritual.

Paschal lamb is pretty self-evident. The next most obvious food is eggs. Rebirth, fertility and a meal all rolled into one. The significance of eggs at Easter goes well beyond symbolic attachment - for large periods of time the Catholic Church forbade eggs during the period of lent, leaving the devout with a serious hankering for an omelet on Easter morning.




Candy is good, Easter Candy is perplexing

More confusing than Easter’s savory foods is its association with sweets. Now the second most candied holiday behind Halloween, Easter baskets are filled by the big three: Chocolate Bunnies, Jelly Beans and Peeps. Chocolate bunnies, hollow – occasionally creepy, & almost never made of good chocolate are the best sellers. The custom of Easter sweets goes back centuries: mendicants and paupers were originally given hot cross buns during holy week in Medieval times, later the poor were removed and the food became a holiday staple.

Chocolate replaced the hot cross buns during the on onset of the Victorian Era. About this time industrial techniques changed in how chocolate was processed. In essence, a smoother, more consistent chocolate with a longer shelf life was being mass-produced and distributed well beyond urban centers, making chocolate an affordable treat for all. Two more practical considerations aided the rise in chocolate consumption: There are only so many buns a bakery can produce in a week, while chocolate can be produced in advance for the holiday. And people, women, men, children – all have been known to crave chocolate more than hot cross buns.

Chocolate is still the number one Easter candy, but peeps have moved into the number two slot. Made by a Pennsylvania based confectioner named Just Born, which is in turn owned by Rodda Candy. Despite a large Easter presence, the company name refers to a guarantee of freshness, not an overt evangelical testament. Peeps - a marshmallow of made corn syrup, sugar, gelatin, carnauba wax and a slate of unpronounceable chemicals - were either invented or the production was automated in 1953. Over 50 years later, If PR flak is to be believed, 700 million peeps will be purchased for Easter related activities.

There is no statistic on how many peeps are actually digested. If youtube is any guide, at least 100 million have been used in Star Wars or Lord of the Ring reenactments. Not that I can judge harshly, I have purchased Peeps and not to get all Johnny Cash about stuff: I have thrown Peeps into fireplaces just to watch them burn. Youtube seems to exist for Chocolate (Rain) and things to do to peeps.

I’d feel better about this if 80,000 actually people did this to peeps rather than watched it on youtube.