There's a small window during early spring when I'm driven to irrational acts in the produce department of my local grocery store. I'm so tired of the limited contents of my winter fruit bowl; I begin to consider the out-of-season fruit on offer. I approach a display of melons, lifting a honeydew that is turning a soft yellow—a sign of maturity—and press the blossom end to my nose, hoping to inhale its honeyed scent. I smell nothing. Melons need the hot sun of high summer to ripen fully so I know that the good ones are still months away. Such is the state of my desire; I turn and consider the berries.
Fruit out of season is a taunt, a promise without the delivery. It's a caution against rushing the seasons. Harold McGee brings me back to this cold continent when he states that "quality depends mainly on how far [the fruit] had ripened on the plant. They're best when picked and shipped as ripe as possible."[1]
But ripeness is a state at odds with travel. Consider the great care needed to transport fruit that is fully ripe and tender the few short miles from local market to your home. It's like carrying a stack of porcelain teacups. So growers who have to ship their produce great distances harvest fruit before it reaches its "last, intense phase of life."[2] Its essential pleasure remains in the field, its natural cycle foreshortened. Edward Behr writes that "a melon that's picked only partly ripe will gain in juice off the vine but not in aroma or sugar"[3], so those under ripe specimens I was contemplating will never realize their potential as a "feast for our eye and palate."[4]
Ripeness is what I'm really after in the chill grey days of early April. When the tinge of spring green seems impossibly far off. I long to breathe in the soft floral fragrance of a melon warm from the sun, to have its juices run down my arm as I scoop the moist tangle of seeds and fibrous strands from its core and taste its succulence. I crave eating an entire melon in one day so that it won't sour or, worse, need refrigeration. Ripeness turns so quickly to rot.
My restlessness owes something to the fact that, come early spring, winter fruit starts to suffer its own deterioration. It loses moisture, a sure sign of months of storage under less-than-ideal conditions. The once thick, supple skin of Cara Cara oranges begins to thin and toughen; clinging so tightly to the juicy pulp it protects that peeling is tricky. Apples that should give with a pleasing crack and ooze milky sweet foam when bitten into are soft, dry and granular.
I'll have to be patient and wait the few weeks until rhubarb, Ontario’s first edible sign of spring, appears. Its deep pink colour at odds with its vegetable nature and the brownish-grey of a post-winter world. As kids we'd snap it from the patch and run inside to beg a bowl of sugar. We'd coat the moist end with enough white crystals to counter its acidic shock and the ensuing flood of saliva. Too much raw rhubarb and our tummies would ache.
So full of moisture is rhubarb in season that cooking should be gentle and brief. If cooked too long or over too high a heat, rhubarb quickly disintegrates into soft fibres that float like pink gossamer threads in sweet poaching liquid the colour of cherry blossoms.
After rhubarb come the local strawberries. Early last May I watched from the sidewalk in front of a local Asian fruit market as an employee picked berries out of a transparent clamshell from California and piled them into green fibreboard containers near a sign that read “Ontario.” There's profit to be made by tapping a desire that's not mine alone. I knew it was too early for Ontario’s strawberries. Those unnaturally large California berries were stripped of the fruit’s natural attraction: there was no discernible scent—fruit’s first lure.
Of strawberries Edward Behr writes: "The most aromatic varieties are typically smaller, softer, more vulnerable."[5] They have a deep red pigment and sweet juices that ooze crimson liquid, bleeding through the container or paper bag. When eaten, their tiny seeds create an almost imperceptible crunch. I imagine macerating them with a little sugar, then watching as the soft red fruit and juices seep like watercolour pigment into fatty yogurt at breakfast.
Ripeness is exquisite; the desire it elicits ensures a fruit’s propagation. My response to its signals is ancient and hardwired. Harold McGee explains: "When the seeds become capable of growing on their own and the fruit is ready to attract animals to disperse them, the fruit is said to be mature."[6] I'm impatient with the current seasonal "progress from inedibility to deliciousness".[7] The destination is small consolation when we seem stuck somewhere on the front end of this journey. I feel like the kid in the back seat of the car: Are we there yet?
[1] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[2] Ibid, p. 353
[3] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 84
[4] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[5] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 365
Fruit out of season is a taunt, a promise without the delivery. It's a caution against rushing the seasons. Harold McGee brings me back to this cold continent when he states that "quality depends mainly on how far [the fruit] had ripened on the plant. They're best when picked and shipped as ripe as possible."[1]
But ripeness is a state at odds with travel. Consider the great care needed to transport fruit that is fully ripe and tender the few short miles from local market to your home. It's like carrying a stack of porcelain teacups. So growers who have to ship their produce great distances harvest fruit before it reaches its "last, intense phase of life."[2] Its essential pleasure remains in the field, its natural cycle foreshortened. Edward Behr writes that "a melon that's picked only partly ripe will gain in juice off the vine but not in aroma or sugar"[3], so those under ripe specimens I was contemplating will never realize their potential as a "feast for our eye and palate."[4]
Ripeness is what I'm really after in the chill grey days of early April. When the tinge of spring green seems impossibly far off. I long to breathe in the soft floral fragrance of a melon warm from the sun, to have its juices run down my arm as I scoop the moist tangle of seeds and fibrous strands from its core and taste its succulence. I crave eating an entire melon in one day so that it won't sour or, worse, need refrigeration. Ripeness turns so quickly to rot.
My restlessness owes something to the fact that, come early spring, winter fruit starts to suffer its own deterioration. It loses moisture, a sure sign of months of storage under less-than-ideal conditions. The once thick, supple skin of Cara Cara oranges begins to thin and toughen; clinging so tightly to the juicy pulp it protects that peeling is tricky. Apples that should give with a pleasing crack and ooze milky sweet foam when bitten into are soft, dry and granular.
I'll have to be patient and wait the few weeks until rhubarb, Ontario’s first edible sign of spring, appears. Its deep pink colour at odds with its vegetable nature and the brownish-grey of a post-winter world. As kids we'd snap it from the patch and run inside to beg a bowl of sugar. We'd coat the moist end with enough white crystals to counter its acidic shock and the ensuing flood of saliva. Too much raw rhubarb and our tummies would ache.
So full of moisture is rhubarb in season that cooking should be gentle and brief. If cooked too long or over too high a heat, rhubarb quickly disintegrates into soft fibres that float like pink gossamer threads in sweet poaching liquid the colour of cherry blossoms.
After rhubarb come the local strawberries. Early last May I watched from the sidewalk in front of a local Asian fruit market as an employee picked berries out of a transparent clamshell from California and piled them into green fibreboard containers near a sign that read “Ontario.” There's profit to be made by tapping a desire that's not mine alone. I knew it was too early for Ontario’s strawberries. Those unnaturally large California berries were stripped of the fruit’s natural attraction: there was no discernible scent—fruit’s first lure.
Of strawberries Edward Behr writes: "The most aromatic varieties are typically smaller, softer, more vulnerable."[5] They have a deep red pigment and sweet juices that ooze crimson liquid, bleeding through the container or paper bag. When eaten, their tiny seeds create an almost imperceptible crunch. I imagine macerating them with a little sugar, then watching as the soft red fruit and juices seep like watercolour pigment into fatty yogurt at breakfast.
Ripeness is exquisite; the desire it elicits ensures a fruit’s propagation. My response to its signals is ancient and hardwired. Harold McGee explains: "When the seeds become capable of growing on their own and the fruit is ready to attract animals to disperse them, the fruit is said to be mature."[6] I'm impatient with the current seasonal "progress from inedibility to deliciousness".[7] The destination is small consolation when we seem stuck somewhere on the front end of this journey. I feel like the kid in the back seat of the car: Are we there yet?
[1] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[2] Ibid, p. 353
[3] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 84
[4] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[5] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 365
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