Rain and Oranges

Be careful what you ask for! No sooner were we talking about the balmy weather and wishing for rain than a storm moved in, giving us a wet and muddy week--much to the delight of our big farm pooch, Noches, who's never happier than when he's got lots of orchard mud to track everywhere. Luckily, the winds weren't too bad and the trees look even healthier for their spring bath.

We hope you enjoyed the spring holiday weekend. At the farm, it's a quiet time, watching and waiting for the next few weeks as the first cherries begin ripening. We can't wait to start putting our own Frog Hollow Farm fruit into your boxes, but there's no hurrying Mother Nature. Look for the first boxes of cherries to arrive in about a month. Once the season starts, though, it will bring with it a steadily growing avalanche of fresh stone fruit, from cherries and apricots through peaches, plums, nectarines, and pluots.

Until, we'll be continuing on with a mix of juicy citrus, kiwi, avocados and the occasional sub-tropical treat like passion fruit or cherimoya from Southern California. This week's recipe is a fast, easy, and healthy fish-and-salsa dish, using a mix of citrus with cilantro and a bit of hot chile. You can also cut the fish into strips and serve it as a taco in warmed tortillas.


Red Snapper with Mexican Citrus Salsa

Adapted from Mark Bittman in the New York Times.
This vibrant citrus salsa makes a great pairing for simply cooked fish. Serve with sliced avocados alongside.

1 orange or tangelo
1 small grapefruit
1 lemon, preferably Meyer lemon
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 habanero or other chili, seeded and minced, or to taste
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons oil
4 red snapper fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each, preferably skin on

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Cut orange in half horizontally and cut out sections as you would a grapefruit, leaving the membranes behind; do this over a bowl to capture all its juice. Remove seeds and combine flesh and juice in bowl. Repeat with grapefruit and lemon. Stir in habanero and salt, adding cilantro just before serving.
Put oil in a nonstick or cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. A minute later, add fish, skin side down; season top with salt. Cook until skin begins to crisp, 3 or 4 minutes, then transfer to oven. Cook another 3 or 4 minutes, or until a thin-bladed knife meets little resistance when inserted into thickest part of fish. Serve fish with salsa, immediately.

Around the Farm

We're enjoying this balmy weather out on the farm, although we would like we would like a little more rain before the dry season sets in. But this mild, warm, and sunny weather is great for the trees as their tiny fruits begin to grow. Excessive wind, rain, or hail can damage the delicate young fruits at this stage, scarring their skins or even knocking them off the branches altogether. So we're hoping this mild weather continues, helping us towards another bumper crop this summer.

The fruit we all love is just one part of what can be used from the tree. At our cafe in San Francisco's Ferry Building, we keep a stash of dried peach leaves on hand to add whenever we make iced tea. The leaves add a delicious subtle fruitiness, and keep well dried or in the freezer. We decorate with eye-catching displays of flowering branches brought in from the orchard.

Smash an apricot pit with a hammer and you'll find a small, tender kernel inside. This kernel is used to give the distinctive bitter-almond flavor to baking extracts and liqueurs like Amaretto. While you shouldn't eat these kernels whole, you can drop a couple of kernels into a batch of apricot jam to give just a hint of almond flavor. Later in the season, as the trees are pruned back, we might load up the barbecue with fragrant, clean-burning apple or cherry wood. (Applewood-smoked bacon is a particular favorite in the Bay Area, and with good reason, since the smoke produced by applewood enhances rather than overwhelms the pork.)

Now is a great time to get ready to preserve some of your summer bounty. Lay in a stock of fresh canning jars (available at many supermarkets and most hardware stores) or get a few big boxes of heavy-duty plastic freezer bags. Whatever you can't eat at its peak can be canned or frozen for later use, when the luscious peaches of July are just a memory.

-SJR

Orange & Passion Fruit Gelatin

Made with fruit juice and unflavored gelatin, this jiggly dessert has all the slippery fun of Jell-O, but it's actually good for you, without any added sugar or artificial colorings.

2 passion fruit
3/4 cup Bonterra organic muscat wine or other lightly sweet white dessert wine (white grape juice can be substituted)
1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed orange or tangelo juice
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin, such as Knox

Scoop the insides of the passion fruits into a small saucepan, and warm gently. Scoop into a strainer and push the pulp through in a bowl, leaving the seeds behind. Add muscat. Sprinkle on the gelatin. Let gelatin soften for several minutes.
Warm orange juice until just hot but not boiling. Pour into gelatin mixture and stir well until gelatin is dissolved. Pour into bowl and chill for four or five hours or overnight, until firm and set.

Adapted from Good Tempered Food by Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Passionate Fruits?

Thanks to its name, the passion fruit shows up on a lot of Valentine's Day menus. But what's passionate about the passion fruit? Well, we hate to disillusion all you romantics out there, but the name has nothing to do with its powers as an aphrodisiac. The fruit of this tropical vine was dubbed the passion fruit by Catholic friars arriving in its Brazilian homeland, who saw Christian symbolism in the shape and markings of the flowers.

As Elizabeth Schneider writers in her book, Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables, "The complex and remarkably beautiful flowers are the origin of this name, with different parts of the bloom representing the wounds, crucifixion nails, crown of thorns, and the Apostles." Some of the friars even saw the vine as justification for their missionary work; to them, it was clearly put there to bring the indigenous populations to Christianity.

That's a lot of symbolic freight for one plant to carry. Luckily, no matter how you look at the plant, the passion fruit itself is a delicious, sweet-tart treat that has been enjoyed all around the world for centuries.

The easiest way to eat your passion fruit is to cut off the top and scoop out the jelly-like golden pulp with a spoon. The small black seeds are edible and pleasantly crunchy, although they can be sieved out for a more elegant presentation. Let the fruit soften and get a little wrinkly before eating for the fullest flavor and aroma.

--SJR

Recipe-Chunky Guacamole

Let your avocados ripen at room temperature until they have a little “give” when gently squeezed. Always cover any leftover cut avocado tightly, since they will oxidize and turn brown when exposed to air.

2 ripe avocados
juice of 1 lime (or to taste)
1/4 tsp salt
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper, minced (optional)
1 scallion, chopped (or 1 tbsp minced red onion)
1/4 tsp cumin
3 or 4 sprigs cilantro, chopped
1 tomato, seeded and diced

Cut avocado in half and remove pit. Scoop out flesh and mash roughly. Sprinkle with salt, lime juice, minced hot pepper, scallion, and cumin. Stir together well. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt, lime juice, or cumin as needed. Just before serving, stir in most of the chopped cilantro and diced tomato. Sprinkle with a little more chopped cilantro and serve. Baby carrots, celery sticks, and red bell pepper strips make great healthy “dippers”!

CSA Newsletter: Food Not Lawns 3 22 09

Food Not Lawns is the catchy title of a very useful book. In it, subtitled How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, author Heather Coburn Flores makes a persuasive case for homeowners to turn their home turf into edible gardens. Whether you’ve got a front yard, a back yard, or even just a sunny strip along the side: one you get beyond the green lawn, the potential for really going green expands with every square foot of soil.

There are decorative edible flowers, like nasturtiums, that can grow between rows of vegetables. A trellis lush with climbing bean vines draws in bees and hummingbirds while forming a natural screen for privacy--much more delicious than a board fence or box hedge. (Scarlett runners produce prodigiously, first bright-red flowers, then succulent flat beans which can be eaten fresh or left to mature into bright pink-and-black shelling beans.)

Children find root vegetables irresistible--the mystery of what’s hidden under the soil, the surprise that something as ordinary as a carrot or a radish actually lives deep in the dirt, the thrill of pulling on a handful of leaves and yanking out a full-grown carrot or fat red beet.

Even the Obamas are taking Flores’ advice. Not the whole White House lawn, but one section (over by the girls’ swing set) is going to be turned into an organic garden. It will double as an edible schoolyard for local D.C. schoolchildren, who’s not only get to weed and water but will take their harvest into the White House kitchens and learn how to cook (and eat) their dirt-fresh bounty.

By doing this, the Obamas set a great example for families all across the country. Maybe you don’t have the space to grow all your own squash and potatoes. But you can probably grow several months of salads, courtesy of a pack of mixed salad-green seeds, a sprawling cherry tomato plant, perhaps a sugar-snap pea vine or two. Kids who’ve gotten dirty planting, watering, poking at and picking their own vegetables are much more likely to eat (and like) their veggies. Why not plant some seeds today and see what grows?

IN THE BOX

Avocados? Tomatoes? Isn’t this supposed to be a fruit CSA? By common definition, both avocados and tomatoes are, technically, fruit, even if you wouldn’t bake them in a pie. (Although we have seen--and tasted--both green-tomato and creamy avocado-chocolate pies!) Much like a peach or a cherry, the avocado’s single pit contains all its tree’s genetic information.

Given enough time and space, you could grow your own avocado tree from the avocado in your box this week--although it’s probably more feasible to grow a simple houseplant instead. After you’ve eaten your avocado, poke three or four toothpicks into the pit, equally spaced like spokes on a wheel. Use the toothpicks to suspend the pit (wide side down) over a glass of water, keeping the bottom submerged. Watch the roots grow from the pit; when you’ve got a sturdy-looking tangle, plant in a generous-sized pot with the tip of the pit sticking out of the soil.

These organic tomatoes got a jump on summer by growing in warm greenhouses rather than out in the chilly spring breezes.

So, what's in the box this week?

Avocado ~ Haas Eco-Farms, Temecula, CA

Grapefruit~ Star Ruby South Texas Organics, Mission, TX

Apple~ Fuji Deneven Apples, Santa Cruz, CA or Bruce Rider, Watsonville, CA

Orange ~ Navel Eco-Farms, Temecula, CA

Tangelo ~ Minneola Eco-Farms, Temecula, CA

Tomatoes Wilgenburg Greenhouses, Dinuba, CA

Kumquat Reading

Hope you've been enjoying your kumquats this week! The San Francisco Chronicle recently featured these sweet-tart fruits in a short article filled with with some interesting history and facts, including intriguing ideas from local restaurants. Range uses them in a salad with smoked trout, while the Chez Panisse Cafe tops Page mandarin sherbet with candied kumquats. There's even a bakery in New York City called the Kumquat Cupcakery.