A Little Extra Sunshine
By Frank Whitman
This week I bought a box of grapefruit from the Wilton Kiwanis Club. It’s a fundraiser for them, but a winter antidote for me. In the depths of winter (and we are having winter this year) bright and sunny citrus is here to fight the doldrums. It must be part of a grand plan.
Citrus fruit is popping up from all directions. Besides the Kiwanis offering, our friends who live on the South Carolina coast have sent two boxes of fruit from their Meyer Lemon tree. And then, Yankee Magazine hit our mailbox this week, touting citrus and sharing five tempting recipes to use all manner of oranges.
It wasn’t always that way. Citrus fruit was, for most of history, a rare commodity. If you were royalty, like King Frederick I of Prussia, then you could possess the ultimate luxury of the era. In 1709, at no small expense, he added a plush Orangery to the vast and magnificent Palace of Charlottenburg outside of Berlin to have his orange trees close by.
Railways in the 19th century quickly brought fresh fruit from Florida to the cold, wintry north. Even then oranges were a treat, put in the toe of Christmas stockings and served at special occasions. It’s hard to imagine, when citrus now gets its own aisle at the store.
I’ve ordered from the Kiwanis Club in the past. The fruit is a cut above what you get in the store. Plump, juicy and flavorful, the grapefruit disappears quickly. Halved and sectioned in the traditional way, they’re great anytime of day. Combined with mixed fruit or matched with roasted beets and goat cheese, the addition of grapefruit makes a refreshing salad. Broiled grapefruit with its crust of brown sugar is a tradition in Marsha’s family.
The Kiwanis club is offering more than just grapefruit. Clementines and Cara Care oranges as well as grapefruit can be ordered by the box or in combo packs. I suggest a mixed bag of citrus sunshine.
But they won’t be here until February.
The Meyer lemons (a cross between a lemon and an orange) will have to fill in for now. The good news is: we have plenty. While not as pretty as commercially raised fruit, they’re sunny and fresh inside. They make a tangy vinaigrette for salads and add some zing in almost any recipe. A batch of curd is easy to do and handy to have. A jar in the fridge disappears as it fills tarts, garnishes scones and is (clandestinely) scooped out by the spoonful. Marsha’s lemon cake will comfortably fit in the mix.
I cooked up a batch and it came out great – thick, tangy and sunshine yellow. At the suggestion of Sally’s Baking Addiction, I used the leftover egg whites to make meringue shells for a lemon-raspberry Pavlova. My piping skills were a little sketchy, but I did manage to squeeze out six meringue rings. Filled with the curd and topped with some fresh berries, they made a colorful and refreshing dessert for a cold January night.
We’re still working off our remaining Christmas sweets – cookies, German Stollen loaves, Hungarian Bejgli and quite a bit of chocolate candy. Delicious as they are, they don’t supply the sunny magic of citrus.
The Yankee Magazine article covered a range of citrus flavors, but the fruit is largely interchangeable. Don’t have the specified fruit? Try using what’s on hand. Triple Lemon Cake includes lemon juice in the loaf cake, in the syrup brushed on top and the icing that covers it all. Grapefruit flavors Earl Gray Sables, a French shortbread cookie. Oranges are mixed with fennel and pistachio in a salad. And Tangerines are substituted for lemons in a classic bar. Citrus fits in everywhere.
Our son in California, has both a grapefruit and an orange tree in front of his house by where he parks his car. He’ll pluck some fruit from time to time, but as delicious as it is, it doesn’t have the magic of brightening short, cold, possibly snowy winter days. They don’t have those where the fruit grows.
So cool.
Thanks for promoting Kiwanis fruit.
W
Hi Frank
Nothing better than lemon curd on a ginger cookie with a hot cup of tea on a cold winter’s day!
Happy New Year to you and Marsha
Thanks, I’m having that for tea this aftgernoon. Marsha’s eyes lit up when she herd you idea.