fruit notes
Growing up, Longan, which translates to “dragon eye” in Chinese, was a special fruit to have in the house. It’s more expensive compared to other fruits and they weren’t always available fresh at the Asian grocery stores my mom shopped at. When they were available, and tasting good, my mom would buy big bags of them. We’d sit around the table peeling away the smooth, brown, bark-like skin to get to the juicy translucent flesh. Longan is in the same family as lychee, but the flavor profile is quite different. Longan are sweet, with firmer, juicy flesh, and have a slight nutty flavor to them; lychee has more floral aromas. All the longan I ate growing up were imported from Asia, traveling a long way before making it to our table. In fact, I didn’t even know longan could grow in California. Now, after eating Santa Barbara-grown Longan that’s freshly harvested, I’m realizing what I ate growing up had the slightest bit of rancidity to it. It’s nowhere to be found with this Longan.
If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ve probably heard me say that Jay Ruskey started his farming career as a specialty fruit grower. Nowadays, he’s known as the pioneer of California coffee growing. But hiking around the ranch, encountering the dozens and dozens of uncommon and unlikely varieties growing there, it’s clear his roots are in fruitworld. And as you might gather, he loves the challenge of growing things that don’t seem like they could (or should) grow here. Longan fruit is one of these things. Twenty years ago, Jay worked with the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources to try to adapt longan and lychees to Southern California farms. They trialed over a dozen varieties of longan and about half a dozen of lychee on 26 farms throughout Southern California. They found that longan is less finicky about weather conditions, making it easier to grow than lychees in California. Ultimately, they determined that other specialty crops held more market potential (ahem, coffee), but the trials proved viability. There are a few remaining varieties left at Condor Ridge from that experiment decades ago, and this week we’re sharing their harvest. The fruit is bursting with flavor! If you eat a few in one sitting, you can really taste the different varieties – some candy-sweet, some more grape-y, with variations in texture. It’s pretty cool to eat super fresh California-grown longan! Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Condor Ridge Ranch in Goleta.
After weeks of checking in on the blueberry harvest, the first Snowchaser blueberries from Coastal Moon are finally here! (It’s really a story of patience and persistence: the harvest manager Jonathan’s patience with my persistence.) It’s still early season, so the berries will only get bigger from here. (We’ve seen them nearly the size of a quarter.) Sometimes I’m not sure anyone realizes there is a blueberry season, given the permavailability of blues, imported or domestic, in supermarkets. But of course there is: California’s blueberries mostly start up in June, from the Central Valley. We’re lucky enough to get some of the first fruit off the bushes from Coastal Moon, who grow an early-season variety called Snowchaser, under hoop-houses in Watsonville. Even early-season, they are tasting extremely sweet and packed with the most blueberry-y flavor! (I really missed that!) More to come. Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Coastal Moon Farm in Watsonville.
Last week, we introduced the ‘Booth’ cherimoya and this week, Condor Ridge harvested the most beautiful ‘Dr. White’ cherimoya. The ‘Whites’ are rich like papaya with tropical notes of banana, guava, piloncillo, and pineapple. The texture is custardy with large black seeds sprinkled throughout the flesh, which you should take care to avoid. Cherimoya fruit is native to the valleys of the Andes in Ecuador and Peru. Closer to home, the tropical oasis of Condor Ridge Ranch in Goleta is the perfect environment for cherimoya to thrive, with leeward slopes protected from the direct ocean elements. The farm has a perfect climate for subtropical fruits and the cooler winter months benefited the cherimoya plants with a bit of chill. In the Andes, a tiny native beetle pollinates cherimoya flowers. Pollinators like the honey bee are too large to fit in the narrow spaces between the cherimoya’s petals and the Andean beetle does not exist in California, so cherimoyas require hand-pollinating each flower for proper fruit set. The cherimoya is ready to eat when it has a little give (like an avocado) and the skin starts to brown slightly. Once it’s ripe to your liking we recommend popping it in the fridge to chill for a bit. The result is sweet & cold, nature’s ice cream is our motto this season! Grown organically by Condor Ridge Ranch in Goleta.
Nagami kumquats are one of the most commonly grown varieties. Their sturdiness has something to do with it, considering they can hang on trees late into the spring months. The skin is a deep, bright orange, matching the flavor. If you’ve never had a kumquat, the skin is sweet and the flesh is super tart and juicy. Nagami kumquats are much tarter than the Meiwa kumquats we’ve been eating earlier in the season. They can really pack a zingy tart punch! Store on the counter. Grown organically by Garcia Organic Farm in Fallbrook.
Ice Cream Beans! Inside the (inedible) green pod is white flesh – like cotton candy that tastes like vanilla custard. The white fleshy “fruit” surrounds a big black bean that is edible when cooked but can otherwise be treated like a seed (read: don’t eat them raw!) Ice cream beans, or inga, is commonly planted alongside coffee trees to provide shade and wind protection, and to help fix nitrogen in the soil. It’s extremely fast-growing and even though it’s a legume like beans and favas, it grows like a tree! Jay, along with other small coffee farmers, are growing inga symbiotically with their coffee plants in Southern California. Inga can be found growing in the wild and in agroforestry systems throughout Central and South America, but it isn’t exported due to its short shelf-life, perishability, and unfamiliarity in the market. Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Condor Ridge Ranch in Goleta.
Pixie mandarins are a cult classic, and Churchill Orchards grows one of my favorite versions of them! Pixies aren’t such an obvious choice for commercial growers. It takes four years from planting to bear fruit, and eight years to reach full maturity. That’s nearly double the wait compared to other varieties, meaning a lot of unpaid rent. (Kind of like living with your 30 year old kid – which IS sometimes worth it!) To tax a grower’s patience still, Pixies are alternate-bearing, meaning one year the trees bear loads of fruit, and the next year they might yield a third or less. They are also quite finicky about climate. Pixies like hot summer days and warm winters. There are few microclimates in California that fit the bill but Ojai is one of them. This may sound like a long list of cons, but one taste makes it pretty clear. Pixies are sweet and deeply flavorful (and super cute!), making the wait for spring berries a little bit easier. Store on the counter. Grown organically by Churchill Orchard in Ojai.
We consider ourselves picky grapefruit eaters and we often look for late-hanging red grapefruit for maximum flavor development. These Rio Red grapefruit from The Cloverleaf Farm have had a long hang-time on the tree throughout winter, developing the prettiest blush across the skin. These Rio Reds have that classic sweet-tart flavor and a welcoming refreshing taste as we move into sweeter fruit in the springtime. Store on the counter. Grown organically by The Cloverleaf Farm in Winters.
