Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

food

Holiday marmalade at risk

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Of all preserves, marmalade is my favorite. I prefer the tang of marmalade on my morning toast with tea, and I prefer making it rather than purchasing it. The recipes are simple: fruit, juice, a LOT of sugar, and time for soaking to extract the pectin from the fruit to jell the marmalade. These recipes feel old-fashioned to me. Making them, I imagine a continuity with jam-preparers in the past, putting up the bounty of the harvest for later. I also like to give handmade gifts—knit items, jars of preserves, and this fits right in.

Given the movement to support local agriculture, I do feel a little guilty about my marmalade affection. Michigan grows lots of fruit: strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, apples, wonderful tart cherries, blueberries, and many more varieties. Michigan grows no citrus. While I do make some local preserves, I prefer a citrus marmalade over all others.

Seville oranges

Seville oranges are the best for marmalade. They are also known as “sour” or “bitter” oranges and are the preferred fruit for English marmalades. Seville oranges are imperfectly round, a little knobbly. Their meat is a little washed out: yellow rather than the bright orange of the navel orange. And their juice is not as sweet. Their imperfection feels like a bonus to me: more wild, less engineered, somehow essentially “original orange”. Plus they make the best preserves. Their sour tang pairs well with the sugar in the preserve and their juice has a lovely, floral note.

They aren’t “eating oranges” and I have never seen them in a supermarket. For the last several years, I have ordered them from a grower in Florida. Yet this year, as I prepared for my holiday marmalade-making, I found nothing. My web searches turned up old pages on ecommerce sites that show Seville oranges as “unavailable.” The company where I have ordered them before replied to my note:

Thank you for your inquiry regarding Seville Oranges.  Sadly, we lost the grove from which we harvested the Sevilles and no longer have this fruit available.  I am not aware of an alternate Florida source for Sevilles.

Imperiled Florida citrus

My correspondent didn’t say, but the grove was probably lost to citrus greening. Citrus greening is a disease that has affected groves around the world, including Asia and South America.

The disease is caused by bacteria and transmitted via an insect. The bacteria Candidatus Liribacter asiaticus infects and damages the tree’s vascular system, specifically the phloem which transports sugar and minerals. Trees with phloem damage lessen their ability to feed their leaves and fruit. Leaves on infected trees will grow irregularly and look mottled. Leaves and twigs will die back at the ends of branches. Fruit will stay green, may be lopsided, and have underdeveloped seeds.  Once infected, trees cannot recover and there is no cure. An insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, spreads the bacteria from infected to uninfected trees. 

Infected trees were first found in Florida in 2005. Although farmers cut and burned infected trees, it spread anyway. More than just the Seville orange is at risk in Florida. According to the University of California, Davis, citrus greening has reduced orange production in Florida by seventy-five percent and grapefruit production by eighty-five percent.

My 2020 Florida marmalades

For now, if I wish, I can mail order Seville oranges from California, which is monitoring the spread of citrus greening in its groves. Somehow it seems momentous to switch to California, although I eat food grown in California all the time. This year, the citrus for my marmalades came via my nephew’s high school band fundraiser. He lives in Tennessee, the grower is in Florida.

Last week, I got a mixed box of grapefruit and oranges here in chilly Michigan. On one hand, it’s lovely to be connected across distance and isolation with my nephew. It’s also lovely to receive in-season fruit when Michigan fruit trees are bare. Yet, the movement of produce and plants at the heart of this transaction is challenging the survival of citrus groves worldwide. Although we associate Florida with citrus, oranges are thought to have originated in Asia, and the first Florida trees grew from seeds brought from Europe, such as the Seville orange from Spain. The transport of crops and commerce around the world accidentally moves diseases and parasites too. Then, crops in many places suffer from the same disease and may disappear.  Citrus, a beloved global crop, is now declining in many places.

I made marmalade this weekend, two varieties: grapefruit-lemon and cranberry-orange. I did use Michigan cranberries.

My 2020 marmalades: cranberry-orange marmalade in the tall Ball jar, grapefruit-lemon marmalade in the wide-mouth Kerr jar. I use the Blue Chair cookbook.

A personal connection to the loss

When I eat a Florida orange, I connect with sitting at the kitchen table in my father’s Florida condo, squeezing out the last juice from of a citrus half. I recall the delicious combo of sugar and sour in a fresh navel orange. I connect the fruit with the place and the people I was with: my father and my grandfather foremost, as they are both gone now.

Losing Florida citrus, then, is a loss to me, after so many other losses. Writing this, I realize that connection to Florida memories is part why I make marmalade at the holidays. It’s also why I especially mourn the loss of “my” Seville orange grove in Florida.

Ingredients and Technique

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We’ve had a few houseguests recently, which is odd considering we just moved and we have ripped out our kitchen so we don’t really have the infrastructure for houseguests. We’ve been taking our guests to local eateries, including Zingerman’s Roadhouse.

The other night, I ordered a Classic Martini at Zingerman’s Roadhouse. It’s one of several “classic cocktails” that Zingerman’s is bringing back to life at the Roadhouse Bar.

I have a weakness for a gin martini – with a twist of lemon, exceptionally dry. Basically, if I make one at home I kind of wave a bottle of Vermouth near the martini shaker and that’s it. Well, I knew that Zingerman’s was into traditional cocktail recipes and so I ordered a classic martini, with trepidation. The Zingerman’s classic martini has Plymouth gin, vermouth, and orange bitters. When I saw the bartender pour what seemed like an awful lot of Vermouth into the martini shaker, I thought, well, chalk this one up to experience, looks like I blew my order and I won’t like this drink. Then he put in the bitters.

But, I relaxed a bit when I saw him work the lemon, he held the lemon over the glass as he dug deeply into the rind to carve out the twist, covering the empty glass with “expectorated” lemon yumminess.

He made the drink, I tasted it, and then he talked about it. He said it was a great cocktail, one of the best around. He was careful to say that it wasn’t just the recipe, but implied it was the details of the ingredients and the technique that made it special.

He showed off for us, digging the zester into a lemon to create a small mist of lemony goodness and illustrate his point. He was proud of the cocktail. I think I have to incorporate the aggressive zesting into my routine. Beyond that, it made me think of what sets Zingerman’s apart, what makes them special. I think part of it is that they value ingredients and technique, not that they have a magic recipe that can’t be guessed. Their competitive edge is about quality ingredients and consistency of approach and hard work, nothing more magic than that. Worth contemplating.

It’s all about Kale (green #5)

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So, our farm share has helped me incorporate a few new vegetables into my cooking. Previous to the farmshare, I was in a vegetable rut. I admit it, I was serial buyer of broccoli, spinach, and salad. My farmshare has expanded my horizons a little bit. I do not know how I lived a full vegetable experience before beets, and beet greens, chard, and kale.

Now, of course, the crucifer family includes a whole gamut of vegetable yumminess – broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collards, turnips, rutabaga, and Brussels sprouts. Now, I love Brussels sprouts, but if I could only have one, it’d be kale. Broccoli is now way down the list. But, if you roast it, I’ll be first in line. I like my broccoli with char (extra carcinogens) please.

I realized this after the farm share ended, and I was hungering for greens, not salad or spinach, but real greens, like I’d come to rely on during the fall. So, I did something I don’t normally do but should do more often – I went to the fabulous food bar at the People’s Food Co-Op for lunch. I knew they’d have kale. Mmmmmm. I realized I needed to eat there more – local, organic, yummy….

Maybe I’ve just started noticing, but Kale seems to have gone mainstream. I mean, it was just featured in Bon Appetit magazine. I’ve been loving their quick recipe “for supper” – blanch kale for 1 minute, then saute with garlic, onions, garbanzo beans, a little bit of stock, and then top with a fried egg. It’s what I eat when I’m just cooking for me. Yum.

A happy coincidence – finding Hong Kong House in Knoxville (gratitude #49)

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My sister used to live in Marietta, GA. I was reading a great food blog about Atlanta, the Blissful Glutton, which reviewed Tasty China, a restaurant in Marietta that served Sichuan style food. They specialized in cooking with Sichuan pepper, which provides a numbing experience/taste.

The food at Tasty China was delectable. We enjoyed several items, including hot and numbing beef rolls, fish cilantro rolls (no pepper here), dry fried eggplant (kind of like eggplant potato chips, but numbing), and more. The Sichuan pepper numbed our tongues so that regular tap water tasted kind of like Sprite (carbonated and kind of sweet). After our first visit, we tried to stop there or get takeout each time we visited my sister. Well, eventually the Tasty China founder (Peter Chang) left, and when we visited after that, the food was still good in our book. I think he was gone by fall 2007, and our take out was still a highlight of our 2007 Thanksgiving.

Well, my sister and her family moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and I went to visit in early December. On my sister’s fridge when I arrived was a review of Hong Kong House in Knoxville, about 30 minutes away. Turns out that Peter Chang, the chef from Tasty China, had taken over an existing restaurant, Hong Kong House, in Knoxville and he was cooking up the same yummy menu we had loved in Marietta.

Glad my sister and her family followed Peter Chang to the Knoxville area.

Here’s a review in the Knoxville paper.

Canning – a direct experience of the abundance of summer (gratitude #38)

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It’s that time of year, the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market is a study in abundance, and my summer reading, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, has inspired me to can. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

So, I took a perfectly good Saturday and Sunday and made two trips to the Farmer’s Market, a trip to the hardware store, two trips to a grocery store, burned many BTUs of gas on our gas stove, and taught myself to can following the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and an article on canning in the October 2008 Bon Appetit.

This was my discovery:

  • $15 of organic roma tomatoes plus
  • a few dollars of organic shallots plus
  • a few dollars in organic lemon juice plus
  • $30 in canning supplies (jar lifter, magnetic lid lifter, pint jars, canning funnel)
  • labor peeling, seeding, stirring, ladling, and then boiling the jars of sauce

makes about six pint jars of fresh tomato sauce, something which when purchased would have cost many dollars less than what I spent. Yet, I didn’t burn myself, had some fun cooking and learning, have some lovely jars of pinky-red tomatoes lighting up the shelves of my basement, and I have stored a bit of this lovely summer sunshine for later.

I realized that canning is kind of like knitting a sweater. It’s not that I saved any money, it’s that I got to enjoy the process and engaging with something concrete – beautiful yarn in the case of a sweater, beautiful produce in the case of canning. That level of absorbtion and attention is almost intoxicating, while my hands were slicing the 50th tomato, my mind was wondering at the variety of shape and color and detail in the box of romas. Plus, I experienced a distinct sense of abundance when processing a big pile of tomatoes- their weight, their texture, their color, bounty. So, after I finished the tomatoes on Saturday, I was up for another round on Sunday. With dinner guests arriving at 6PM, I carefully planned my day of cornbread-baking, coleslaw-making, peach cobbler-baking, and my husband’s slow cooking of the spare ribs with more canning. I discovered that

  • $20 in fresh figs plus
  • zest of two lemons plus
  • sugar and brandy

makes six 1/2-pint jars of drunken fig jam. It’s tasty, though I’ll have to arrange to get myself invited to sophisticated dinner or wine tasting parties where I can bring this as an addition to a cheese plate…Dear reader, let me know if you’re hosting such an event. I have the housewarming gift ready to go!

I loved it, I’d do it again, and I realized just how much I love my dishwasher, which I think ran about 6 times this weekend, no fooling, and that’s even after I hand-washed all of the pots.

Michigan Tart Cherries make for great pie and “cherished” memories! (gratitude #34)

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I received a subscription to Bon Appetit Magazine, and the cover of the June issue was a spectacular classic sour cherry pie with lattice crust. I read the accompanying article, and I learned that Michigan produces about 75% of the tart or sour cherries in the U.S., and they’re hard to get outside of Michigan.

I love summer pies, and blueberry pie has been my favorite. I love fresh black cherries, but I particularly dislike cherry flavoring in other things. I defy family tradition by detesting black cherry ice cream, for instance. But, I was intrigued, sour cherry pie might be worth trying, because a bit of tartness really helps make a tasty pie.

So, I tore out the recipe and saved it. Today, I went to the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market with my mom and my aunt (visiting from NYC). We picked up 2 quarts of sour cherries for the pie.

The cherries brought back memories. My mom told the story of pitting cherries with a hairpin with her mom. I didn’t have a cherry pitter, so we stopped by a drugstore and got some bobby pins. And then, my mom, my aunt, and I sat on my back deck and pitted 2 quarts of cherries with 3 bobby pins. It worked great – the cherries were perfectly ripe.

My mom reminded me that my dad’s old office had a sour cherry tree behind it, and then I remembered picking cherries from it by sitting on the fence.

My mom then told the story of how on July 4th weekend the year I was born (that would be 12 days before my birth), her father came to town. My mom’s mom had passed away years before, and my grandfather attended to my mom by working beside her. They picked buckets of cherries, sugared them, and froze them, laying in some summer sweetness for the year to come. I suppose I come by my cherry snobbery honestly.

Tonight’s pie was fantastic – the tartness of the cherries required a big dollop of vanilla ice cream as a balance. It’s as good as my favorite, blueberry pie.

But even better than the pie was feeling connected to my mom and my aunt as we sat around a table and worked together and talked, and feeling connected to those that have passed on – my grandmother with her hairpin pitter, and my grandfather offering his labor to ease my mom’s.