English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

Never miss a recipe!

Enter your email address to subscribe to Harvest to Table free via email:

Stone Fleshy Fruits Category Archive

< previous | 1 2 | next >

Jujube

Jujube.

No, not that Jujube!

Jujube, the fruit.

The jujube is about the size of an olive or small date and has the texture and crisp, sprightly flavor of an apple.

You can eat the jujube fresh out of hand or you can enjoy it dried—a favorite in China—or preserved in syrup—a favorite also in China and in Korea. The jujube can also be eaten cooked, made into compotes and jams or into paste. Jujube paste is used to make jujube candy; yes, that “Jujube”, the one you nibble at the movies.

The jujube fruit you will find at the farm market in late summer will be greenish-yellow to yellowish-red colored with a smooth skin. As the jujube matures its reddish skin darkens to maroon and then to purplish black and begins to wrinkle like a date. That is why the jujube (pronounced joo-joob) is also known as the red date or Chinese date.

Continue reading "Jujube" »

Stone Fruit Harvest

Apricots and peaches and plums! Oh my!

How is the stone fruit harvest where you live this year?

Here in the Sonoma Valley and surrounding region, the peach, nectarine, plum, cherry, and apricot harvests are off the charts—or should I say off the scales. Literally! The farm markets are bursting with dandy looking stone fruits this year.

So what makes for a great stone fruit season?

Continue reading "Stone Fruit Harvest" »

Fire Sweet and Fantasia: Two Nectarines

‘Fire Sweet’ and ‘Fantasia’ are two simply mouth-watering nectarines.

‘Fire Sweet’ is a medium-sized nectarine with a flaming red and yellow skin that is smoothly sweet. A grower at the Ferry Building farmer’s market in San Francisco handed me a slice of ‘Fire Sweet’ last Saturday and it was so candy-sweet that I simply could not move before finishing off the whole fruit. I let each bite take a minute to settle in.

‘Fantasia’ is a slightly larger nectarine than ‘Fire Sweet’ with a bright red over yellow skin and yellow, firm, smooth flesh. ‘Fantasia’ is just a tiny bit acidic with a sweet-tart flavor that is mouth filling. I waited an hour after tasting ‘Fire Sweet’ before biting into ‘Fantasia.’ The wait was worth it. For a moment, I thought ‘Fantasia’ was the only nectarine I had tasted that day. It’s smooth and zippy.

Continue reading "Fire Sweet and Fantasia: Two Nectarines" »

Peach Varieties

There are more than 2,000 varieties of peaches. That’s a lot to choose from.

There is no better way to pick a peach (and spend a day) than taste testing peaches at your local farm market. There is a favorite peach taste for everybody.

To find the best peach, first take a whiff: a ripe peach should be sweetly fragrant. Next give the peach a gentle squeeze: a ripe peach won’t be too hard; it should be soft to the squeeze. Keep in mind that the color of a peach tells more about what variety it is than its maturity or ripeness. So don’t assume the best peach has a peachy color; it could be more white or greenish white than peach colored.

And remember that different peach varieties come to harvest at different times of the summer. So you should be able to find a ripe peach—of one variety or another—from late spring all the way to Halloween.

Continue reading "Peach Varieties" »

Peaches

Half a peach poached in syrup served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with raspberry purée: peach Melba.

Barely chilled peach slices served with sugar and cream: peach Mom.

Auguste Escoffier—the most famous chef of his time--created peach Melba in 1892 in honor of the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba.

Peach Mom has been served much longer. It remains a favorite.

The success of any peach dish is a tender and sweet peach. The key to finding a tender and sweet peach is a gentle squeeze. A soft-fleshed peach is ready for the table or eating out of hand. It will be sweet and juicy and melt in your mouth.

Peaches ripen with warming weather. There are early, mid-season, and late season ripening peaches so depending upon where you live and the variety of peaches available peach season can stretch from May to Halloween.

Continue reading "Peaches" »

Nectarine Varieties

Nectarines come to harvest in spring and continue through summer. If you get to know your nectarines and choose from early, midseason, and late harvest varieties, you can have fresh, local nectarines at your table for nearly half the year.

The best way to select nectarines is to smell them and gently squeeze them. A nectarine ready for eating out of hand will be fragrant and not too hard. A ripe nectarine will give to gentle pressure at its seam.

Stay away from greenish colored nectarines or those that are too hard, cracked, bruised, or have blemishes.

There are hundreds of varieties of nectarines. Here are descriptions of several nectarines you might want to try and a note on when they come to harvest:

Continue reading "Nectarine Varieties" »

Nectarines

Botanically speaking the nectarine is a variety of peach. But eaten out of hand or served at the table, the nectarine is both more and less than the peach.

Less: the nectarine is smaller than the peach; it is about the size of a plump plum.

More: the skin of the nectarine is fuzzless which makes it more toothsome than the peach. At the same time, the nectarine’s firm flesh—though succulent—holds together better than a peach when bitten into or sliced. (The term peach and nectarine lovers use for a fruit that disintegrates at your lips is “melting.” The peach is more melting than the nectarine.)

Yes, these are slight differences.

The truth is that the nectarine and peach are interchangeable when it comes to recipes and cookery. Personal taste has a lot to do with which one you favor.

Continue reading "Nectarines" »

Apricot Varieties

The best place to start with apricots is sampling them fresh out of hand. Select apricots that are golden orange and plump, not too soft and not too hard. Apricots that are soft and ripe will have the best flavor. Give them the taste test immediately.

Fresh apricots come to market from mid-spring to mid-summer, May through July and even later in the Northern Hemisphere. The apricot harvest can be divided into early, mid-season and late. That means you can enjoy some or all of these over the course of the apricot harvest.

Continue reading "Apricot Varieties" »

Apricots

There are two apricots you must simply eat out of hand: ‘Blenheim’ is a medium to large, sweet and aromatic, and very juicy apricot with a classic apricot flavor; ‘Moorpark’ is a large, sweet, aromatic, and juicy apricot with a rich plum-like taste.

You will find dozens of varieties of just picked apricots to choose from at your farm market in late spring and on into summer, but ‘Blenheim’ and ‘Moorpark’ deserve your attention.

Once you have enjoyed these two universally acclaimed apricots eaten out of hand, you can then take apricots to the next level: they are delicious in hot and cold desserts, cakes, pastries, fruit salads, ices, preserves, jams, and conserves.

Continue reading "Apricots" »

Sweet Cherry Varieties

Sweet cherries are great for eating out of hand and using in fruits salads, compotes, custards, sorbets, ice cream, and yogurt.

Fresh sweet cherries come to market from mid-spring to mid-summer, May through mid-July in the Northern Hemisphere. The sweet cherry harvest can be divided into early, mid-season and late. That means you can enjoy some or all of these over the course of the cherry harvest.

Continue reading "Sweet Cherry Varieties" »

< previous | 1 2 | next >

Never Miss a Garden Tip!

Just enter your email address and you will subscribe to "Harvest To Table" Web site updates via email for free. Make sure you confirm your subscription from the confirmation message you'll receive in your mailbox right away.