Grilled fruit is a healthy alternative dessert, and easy in the summer when the grill is already going. Almost any fruit can be grilled as long as it holds its shape through the process. smaller fruits can be skewered along with chunks of larger fruits. A side of sauce or cream for dipping is a good addition to your caramelized treats, as well as a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Trying this out couldn't be easier. Get some ripe pears and peaches but not too ripe. Quarter, core, and peel each one into four wedges. Grill until caramelized and smoky, and serve with a small mound of whipped cream on the side. I grilled the ones pictured here earlier in the day and then hid them in the fridge for later. No one complained about not having cookies or cake that night!
Brambles are in season! What are brambles? Raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, swampberries, boysenberries, cloudberries, black caps, and any other wonderful members of the rose family that produce an aggregate berry. A recent trip to Kingston Point Park in Kingston, NY, had us eating almost everything we could pick.
The berries that grew at the point were what the locals here commonly call black caps. These are wild black raspberries. They are usually found on upright, thorny, raspberry canes, and look like a slightly smaller version of the commercial variety. The taste is excellent.
Amy and Alec found a nice stand of wild red raspberries, looking much like commercial ones, and a few bushes of the odd, maple-leafed, purple-flowering-raspberry near Esopus, NY. These are also upright plants and easy to locate. You can spot them well in advance in the Spring with their small, white, flowers. The purple flowering raspberry has a very showy rose-like purple flower.
Blackberries, dewberries, and swampberries, grow along runners tangled in the weeds. These berries have larger aggregrate parts than the raspberry-like fruits, just like store-bought blackberries.
Today is all about mixing sweetness into the usual savory fare. Above, you can watch Chef Johan Jansen make fruit pizza on the grill -- scone dough, berries, a cream cheese-based fruit dip, and whipped cream. It's basically a bbq'd dough topped with dessert goodies, but I wonder about switching it up a little to make an actual cheese pizza -- dough, fruit, and maybe some brie? Still, it looks darned good.
But I'm also going to alert you to one more that has an interesting idea, even if the cooking practices leave a little to be desired. PunkAssChef has posted a how-to for "Sticky Booty Burgers," which are peanut butter and jelly burgers. I just couldn't highlight a show that lathers peanut butter on a burger with a knife, and then dips it back into the jar, so I'm just including it as an add-on. (I'm a pretty easygoing kitchen person, but that just icked me.)
They may sound like something straight out of Willy Wonka, but I assure you, gooseberries are very real. These little round green berries (they also come in pink, though these are rarer) come from a bush native to Europe and North Africa, though they also grow wild in the northeaster U.S., California and Canada. They are a little bit difficult to find in the U.S., but when in season - June through August - those of us living near good produce markets may be in luck.
Gooseberries are usually too puckery to eat raw (though they're quite tasty dried), so you'll normally see them in pies and tarts. Epicurious has a recipe for gooseberry pie, using little more than sugar and a bit of tapioca. Or you could do as the English do an try a gooseberry fool - gooseberries cooked with sugar and layered with cream.
I stopped into my favorite local produce stand after work on Wednesday, to pick up some salad makings (for once, I had used up everything from my CSA share) and a pound of fingerling potatoes for roasting (I've been experiencing something of a roasted potato yen). While I was there, I saw a cluster of woman standing around a display, cooing and exclaiming. Eventually they dissipated, and I was able to see what all the fuss was about. It was a box of tomatoes.
However, these weren't just any tomatoes. These were the very first New Jersey tomatoes of the season. I approached the box with a sense of reverence and briefly considered genuflecting, before determining that the story was a little too crowded for rapturous displays of produce-inspired passion. I reached out and picked up one. It was heavy for its size and felt good in my hand.
I took it home and as soon as was finished photographing it (I knew it was worthy of a blog post), I cut in. The interior was a deep red (none of that pale pink you find in conventional February tomatoes). I ate the first thick slice atop a piece of gently toasted pain au levain, before devoring the rest of the tomato with nothing more than a sprinkling of salt. I officially declare Jersey tomato season open!
I do not like the flavor of sweetened applesauce. I didn't like it when I was a kid and I sure don't like it now. I feel like adding sugar to something that is naturally so sweet and flavorful mutes the delicate flavors and makes it bland and flat. You might think I'm being a little overdramatic here, but I take my applesauce very seriously. In my family, we like to make our own, peeling and coring large mounds of handpicked apples and simmering the fruit down in a large pot with cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest and a hint of ginger. There were always quart sized bags full of frozen applesauce in the freezers of my childhood refrigerators.
So I was relieved to discover that the new line of Mott's Plus Sauce, designed as a way to give active folks an additional way to bring calcium, fiber and antioxidents into their diet, is unsweetened. As I tasted my way through the packets, I liked the Pomegranate flavor the best, as it was tangy and smooth, without being cloying or overly processed. I had a harder time with the Cranberry Raspberry, mostly because you couldn't detect the extra fiber in it at all and I kept wondering if it was really there. Essentially, my brain got in the way of my enjoyment. The Harvest Apple tasted just like the unsweetened applesauce that my grandmother kept around when I was a kid -- smooth, gentle and terrific with cottage cheese.
Michael Pollan tells us not to eat foods with health claims on them, and while it's true that simply eating an apple is the best way to go, this new line of applesauce from Mott's is tasty, free from nasty additives and so is probably fairly inoccuous.
Boy, the mayor and city council of New York City really want you to eat healthily. First they banned trans fats, then they made restaurants post calorie counts on menus, now they're making a push to get more vegetables on the streets.
New York is getting ready to issue about 500 licenses to food carts that sell only fresh fruits and veggies. Mayor Bloomberg says that while he respects the hot dog cart as a New York institution, he hopes that the vegetable cart gets just as much respect. He also hopes that by making fresh fruits and vegetables more available, especially in lower income areas, New Yorkers will lose some weight and reduce skyrocketing levels of obesity-related diseases.
The move has its critics, of course. Mainly the critics say that just because the fresh produce is available doesn't mean people will it it. What do you think about New York's veggie cart plan?
It seems like every other post on my favorite food blogs these days involves some sort of jam -- fruit, spice, anything! Here's a round-up of some particularly fetching jam finds on the blog circuit:
I think I've heard of mangosteens before, at least I've heard the name. Apparently, though, the tropical fruit is all the rage in Japan.
According to this post from InventorSpot, mangosteens, or juice drinks made from them, are very popular in Japan right now because they're supposed to be high in antioxidants and ward off cancer in mice (though that hasn't been tested in humans).
Mangosteens are originally from Thailand, but they're difficult to export from the region because they are so preishable. Also, the tree can only be grown in tropical climates. Those factors make even pureés made from Mangosteens pretty expensive anywhere outside of Southeast Asia.
Now that I know a little more about the fruit I'm curious about it. Have any of you had mangosteen? What do you think about it?
One of the things that says summer to me, more than hot weather, flip flops and the guys with coolers selling water bottles at stoplights and freeway exits is the ability to go fruit picking. I can't remember a single summer since I was 9 years old when I didn't find myself in a field of blueberry bushes, or carefully inserting myself further and further into a thorny blackberry bramble looking for the big, sweet berries.
The first few years I lived on the east coast, I planned a trip back to Portland that always happened to fall neatly during blueberry season (my mother's birthday coincides with ripe Pacific Northwest blueberries). Then last summer I headed to visit my parents in May and realized that if I didn't take matters into my own hands, I would miss out on picking. I started doing some research and found two farms that I absolutely love. This weekend, I'll be heading out to Mood's Farm Market near Mullica Hill, NJ to pick sweet cherries and early blueberries. I'm also planning a trip to Linvilla Orchards for raspberries in the very near future.
One of the things that helped me narrow down my u-pick choices was a guide that Metro Kids magazine (a Delaware Valley publication) put together last summer. They broke it down by state and so have a South Jersey guide, a Pennsylvania guide and a Delaware guide. When I'm in Portland, we always head out to Sauvie Island for all our u-pick needs.
I don't have much in the way of u-pick resources for the rest of the country, so I'm going to ask the rest of you to fill in the blanks. Where do you u-pick?
Every summer, I make a point of buying about a dozen peaches or nectarines, slicing them up and freezing a couple big gallon-sized storage bags full of them. There's nothing better than opening up the freezer come November and being able to throw some sweet, local fruit into a smoothie or a fruit crisp. These particular peaches later became part of a peach and bourbon sauce, which sounds to me like an excellent idea.
Thanks to Maya for adding her pictures to the Slashfood Flickr pool. Check out her blog, My Feasts, for the recipe for that peach bourbon sauce.
During my visit in Dubai, I did what almost every tourist there does. I went to the lavish, semi-futuristic, Vegas inspired malls where you can not only go shopping, but also indoor skiing. While at the Wafi mall, an ancient Egyptian inspired building shaped like a pyramid, I made sure to stop into Wafi Gourmet, a Middle Eastern specialty food store. The selection of dates looked gorgeous.
Wafi Gourmet has a counter full of chocolate covered dates, dates stuffed with oranges, and dates stuffed with pistachios and dipped in chocolate. I started off with a tasting of their plan dates. Their juiciness, freshness, and intense sweetness satiated my palate. I couldn't imagine eating the ones covered in chocolate, but, I'm so glad I did!
Dates are one of the few fruits in Dubai that come from the United Arab of Emirates, and, at the moment, they're in season. At Wafi Gourmet, they sell a few different aged dates. Since I have a sweet tooth, the fresh ones were naturally my favorite. The ones that are aged are more savory. Currently, I'm on a quest to find the same succulent dates in NY. If you know where I can find them, please let me know.
When cherry season arrives, I go a little crazy. I have been known to eat a pound or two and call it a meal. I just got an email last night from one of my favorite u-pick farmers in New Jersey saying that their cherries are ripe and the blueberries are coming in.
This image from Mike (who lives in my hometown of Portland, OR. Woo hoo!). It makes me hungry just looking at it and now I think I have to find some time this weekend to go get myself some cherries. Thanks Mike, for adding your picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool.
Berry jams are probably the most popular in the U.S. When it comes to jams, we rarely consider plums. I love plum jams because they have a unique candy-like sweetness that is tempered by a little acidity and a smooth texture. Below are three types of plums that produce exceptionally one-of-a-kind jams:
Mirabelles: If you have even the slightest sweet tooth, these plums are seriously addictive. Mirabelle jam has dark yellow colored chunks of juicy sweet mirabelle plums. Don't be surprised if you start eating the jam straight from the jar with a spoon. This jam is delicious on buttered toast. These plums are a specialty in the region of Lorraine in France.
Reines Claudes (Greengages): These green wild plums produce a vibrant orange-brownish colored jam. Eating this jam is like eating a decadent confection produced solely for royalty. Reines Claudes are cultivated in the United States, England, and France. The name "Reine Claude" originated from the 16th century in France and refers to queen Claude, the wife of Francis I. Its other name "Greengage" refers to the Gage family that brought the plums from France and cultivated them in England during the 18th century.
Quetsches: They look like large luscious deep purple grapes. Quetsche jam often has a delicate succulent sweet flavor. Quetches come from the regions of Alsace and Lorraine in France where they are used to make desserts and eau-de-vie, clear colorless fruit brandy. Try this dessert at home: Questche plum tart with walnut cream.
It seems like every other post on my favorite food blogs these days involves some sort of jam -- fruit, spice, anything! Here's a round-up of some particularly fetching jam finds on the blog circuit:
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