Celebrating and Investigating Life’s Edible Moments

FRESHLY PUBLISHED WORKS

Clients

Featured Recipes

Apricots, the Precocious Ones

I took a double-take as I scanned the produce at a Middle Eastern grocery store. Piled up among the Iranian cucumbers, Indian baby eggplants, and ricrac-wavy Romano green beans was a heaping box of tiny apricots. It was the second day of June and my third attempt to find an apricot that tasted like an apricot. Fool me twice; shame on me crossed my mind as I held the ripe fragrant fruit to my nose.

The tiny fruit felt as it should, with a slight give of the flesh and skin. I was tempted to pop the walnut-size fruit in my mouth, but visions of watery, mealy, inedible fruit and a pit clacking around in my teeth quashed the impulse.

Finding a naturally ripe apricot in a store is a rarity. Cousins to the peach and plum, apricots are delicate fruits sensitive to harsh winds and late frosts. Unlike the one-size-fits-all grocery store supply chain system, ripe apricots require a personal touch. They must be picked at just the right time, not too early, not too late, to achieve a perfect balance of tartness and sweetness. With this market’s connections to growers of fruits and vegetables seldom seen elsewhere, they didn’t worry about forecasting tools, blockchains, or transportation efficiency. To them, quality is based on taste.

Comte' Cheese, The Savory Jewel of the Jura

On a visit to the Jura Massif region of France, I fell hard for its beauty, tranquility, and dedication to making great food. Foods that began as a necessity centuries ago, like Comte’ cheese, have survived into modern times.

The region’s food may be less known than that of other parts of France, but it deserves as much attention. Comte’ cheese was born in the 13th century in the central-eastern rural sector of France that borders Switzerland. While the snow piled up, dairy farmers preserved milk by making cheese and supplemented their winter incomes by making watches. The 180-pound cheese wheels nourished families in the cold winters, and the farmer’s watch-making skills eventually became some of the world’s most well-known time-keeping companies like Baume & Mercier.

Whether cheese or watchmaking, both require attention to detail. Comte¢ is produced in a defined protected geographic area, called AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée, using precise traditional methods and production standards. Two types of cows, Montbéliarde and French Simmental, provide the milk for the cheese. Their diet of fresh mountain grasses, wildflowers, and local hay gives the wheels their flavor nuances of apricot, caramelized butter, and nutty richness. When you see Comte’ cheese in the store, the color and flavor vary by season; summer grasses and herbs yield a darker golden hue and earthier taste. A diet of winter hay and dried flowers and herbs lends a whiter color with a softer, milky-flavored cheese.