Dates, Leopoldo, and Tania

The final Jean-Talon fruit vendor test was dates. Medjool, not dinner and drinks. In fact, I've had worse dinners than these dates before. I won't get into it, but trust me, sometimes you're better off with medjools.

Now, I've gotten picky with my dates recently (lets focus on fruit, please...); there are Iranian ones that taste like candy, with a richness and fruitiness to the cough syrup taste. Kind of like they're on the edge of fermentation.

Then there are Tunisians. They taste like honey when they're perfectly ripe, and biting into the bottom of them should cause their syrup to stream into your mouth. Then you chew the soft, baklava-like flesh up to the harder top. But this is between my fruit guys, Leopoldo and Tania.

But the Tunisians are just better! They're the ones that I'm not sure where they come from (probably somewhere in the Middle East) and they come in those big red boxes with a plastic window in the front, and you can pick out a few when you want them. I'm sure that the three places I favour when buying these dates all get them from the exact same place. It just all depends on the turnover of the bulk store and the freshness of the dates. Oh, and how they're stored. They dry up easily, but they can get kind of over-ripe in humidity. So keeping them at their optimal juiciness for more than a few days in a Montreal winter is tricky.

Leopoldo and Tania at Jean-Talon market (my competing fruit vendors who don't know it) both sell their dates for 8.99/kg (I think it's kg. I always forget). It's pretty expensive, but these dates are huge. Where I could eat a lot of the smaller honey-filled Tunisians, I can eat significantly fewer of the enormous medjools. I don't want to know what they're sprayed with, but that's probably what sucks the flavour out of them. That's the thing, see, they're not actually that delicious, just sweet. But the texture! When they're soft they're just chewy enough to feel sticky and smooth, but one day in a fridge or in the cold and you're working too hard to chew or adding liquid to make it fresh. They're the perfect thing to eat when you need a boost of energy that won't result in a crash 20 minutes later.

Back to my men: Leopoldo's looked good one day and I bought a few to try. They were okay. A bit dry. I figured most date-buyers wouldn't purchase their dates here at Leopoldo's since he's generally not a Middle East specialist. Italian, South African, American - yes. Then when I was at Tania's buying fennel I saw the dates at the cash register. They were obviously juicy and perfect and I bought some and oh...so good. Except, as usual, no real flavour. No honey, no fruit - just sugar. and sugar's not bad. So they're perfect for baking without refined sugar, but not so perfect for snacking if you're looking for flavour.

That's why I have to go with the Tunisians and toss my men to the wayside. Overrated, men. They all tasted a little different from each other (the dates, not the men, not that I've tried them all or anything, the dates...geez, complicated) - like 5 or so different kinds of honey - strong buckwheat, mild clover, a little bit of blueberry maybe - in one $5 box (did I mention you get 1 kg for $5 at the Tunisian place next to Leopoldo's?). Not that I'm a cheap date...I'm hilarious, I know.

My point is, maybe I'm imagining things, but some just taste different.

My other point is that if fennel, persimmons, and grapes all came from Tunisia and were sold at the Tunisian place next to Leopoldo's, that's where I'd buy them. He'd be my fruit guy, but for now I'm pretty happy with straight sugar and Tania. Sorry Leopoldo. When I want a bit of sarcasm and I'm sick of being treated too well, I'll come crawling back.

Competition #3 Between Leopoldo and the Man With Whom I'm Cheating on Him

...and there there's fennel. It's clear I'm obsessed with this vegetable, and as disappointed as I've been with my fruit guy, Leopoldo, the last few times I've bought it, I decided it was time to try again. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Some people call this empirical science, but no, it's insanity.

So, I chose to go with my second fruit guy and hope his fennel was different...and that I was not crazy. That's important.

I got the same deal on 3 fennel bulbs (for $5) at Tania Fruits - my new fruit guy. I'd been advised by someone which much more kitchen experience than myself to blanch the fennel before roasting them, but that only seemed to make it roast a little faster. It didn't make it any less watery. At least it didn't char as much, but it all kind of melted to fennel mush. Apparently the blanching also keeps it from discolouring, but it was just me eating it, so what did I care about colour?

I did everything else the same: coated the blanched fennel in oil from my pickled Indian jalapenos (amazing! salt, oil, heat) and roasted at 400-ish for 15 minutes, turned the fennel, and roasted another few minutes until they were tender. The elusive "tender-crisp" never appeared. Now I'm blaming my baking sheets. I've tried different sheets and casserole dishes and still nothing is working. I sprinkled the fennel with lemon once it had roasted, and that was lovely, at least, but it was basically chewy soup.

Alas, fennel and I are still working things out. Much like my fruit men. Except they don't know about my tests. I swear I don't usually play games, but choosing the right fruit guy is important in my life.

One more test to go before I stop being such a floozy: Dates, ironically.

Fruit Vendor Throwdown: Dancing, My First Persimmon and Knowing That Something's Missing

Have you ever had an experience where it ends and all you think is "Huh...That's it?"

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt with persimmons, except, well, it wasn't really a disappointed "that's it". Some people can take things so seriously. Sometimes all you're saying is simply, "that's it?" and it doesn't mean that what you just experienced was bad, just that there could be more (quantity) or it just could have been better (quality). With persimmons, even though it was my first time, I knew this was not the ultimate persimmon flavour. Call it fruit intuition. It wasn't fresh off the tree. It wasn't local. It'd been picked in advance to ripen during transport. Its skin was tough to make it through the long drive. It was just sweet and mild, but I wanted intoxication. I wanted to feel as though the world had slid itself out from under my foot and I'd gone tumbling into a gravity-less void. I wanted sharp acidity mixed with honey-like (not sugar-like) sweetness.

The one thing that was perfect was the texture. There were two kinds of persimmons at my fruit shop and there were three ways I was instructed to eat them:

I follow directions well. Where fruit vendors lead, I will follow. Like a dance. So Leopoldo (whose name is not Leopoldo) told me to eat the smaller ones like an apple, I could eat them right away, and they'd be just a little crunchy. Then let a few more of them ripen a few days on the counter and they'd be soft and mushier, more like a mini-explosion of juice. The larger ones, he said, needed 2-3 days on my counter before they were ready. They should become soft and seem like a single puncture wound would be the end of them. Then I could bite into them and all the juices would seep out. Well I waited 2 days and I tried one. It was still a bit tough, but the very bottom was heaven. The top created a strange starchy coating around my gums and seemed under-ripe, so I figured the trick would be to wait another day or so. The next day the next persimmon was better and the fruit was half mushy and half thicker, soft pieces. These sections of fruit stayed together inside the mush and made for exquisite chewing. One persimmon was perfect with cereal because the juice gave the liquid the cereal needed, and the fruit sections gave the soft chew, so it was like two fruit in one (kind of like milk and strawberries - not taste-wise, just combination-wise).

I bought another 8 persimmons from my second fruit guy to compare. The grapes had been better, so maybe the persimmons would be too. Nope, they were exactly the same.

But then I ran out of soft ones and it got so cold that nothing was ripening in my kitchen, so I'm sitting around waiting for them to ripen and they never will. I've just been told that I should stir-fry them up with green beans, spinach or some other vegetable and since they're kind of tough like I apples I think this might work. My two fruit vendors are locked in a tie, for now.

Next trial: fennel.

Cheating on My Fruit Guy

The world is letting me down. First my "free Gazette man" and now my fruit guy. Good thing I still have Guillaume. Loyal Guillaume with his incredible sourdough and his yeast that smells like strawberry jam-filled donuts. I swear.

This is not about Guillaume. This is about Leopoldo. Leopoldo even caught me cheating on him, but I would never cheat on Guillaume. I'm a little scared to go back and face up to my indescretion. I don't think he'll ever offer me his best fruit again. Or make me a deal on mangoes. Good thing it'll be awhile before he gets good mangoes in, I guess...

The worst part is I cheated on Leopoldo with his neighbour whose name I don't even know. Shameful. The two men seemed to be offering me the same things: consistency, comfort, and persimmons.

Oh, and moscato grapes, fennel and dates (medjool. Not the most fun kind, but pretty exciting sometimes).

Then I realized I don't even know the guy from Leopoldo's actual name, since he isn't even Leopoldo himself! Leopoldo is like 60 or 70 or something and rarely even enters his own fruit shop anymore. My crudgety yet lovable salesman must have a different name, and he never told me what it was. So much for trust.

I'd like to say I was drunk and can't be held responsible for my actions, but all I had in my system at the time was one moscato Italian wine grape. Before fermentation.

So why'd I cheat? Leopoldo's neighbour offered me a grape. I didn't pay much attention because I'd had one at Leopoldo's before, but this was completely different. It tasted like wine - sweet without the acidity. I've never had a grape like this before. All the flavour without the alcohol! To some this is a good thing, to others it's less so.

What makes the grapes special is that they're grown on hills and the elevation is what gives them their flavour (along with the added sweetness from the lateness of the season and the concentration of the sugars. Late harvest wines often taste like quasi-dessert wines from sweetening on the vines).

I bought three bunches and my new beau asked if I was going to share with friends. I lied and said yes. A great way to start a relationship. Instead, I ate a bunch and froze the rest, as Josée di Stasio taught me. This concentrates the sugars even more. It was hard to put these beautiful grapes in the freezer, but leaving them in the fridge wasn't making them any more delicious. Eating fruit fresh when it's perfectly ripe is divine...

...which brings me back to persimmons...

One Love Fennel: Roasted Pasta Sauce or Ragout

I went to my fruit guy in Jean-Talon, Leopoldo. He doesn't do local. Neither did he have ataulfo mangoes (though he did the next week), and I knew the white peach and white nectarine seasons were over, so why did I go back to him? Because that's my Sunday. He makes my Sunday a happier day, what with his slightly intimidating self-assured nature that inspires trust.

And it turned out that white nectarines are back in season in California!!! I nearly died of joy.  Leopoldo said they were good, so I bought them. They were better than the Ontario ones, he said (and he was right, since I haven't had a really good Ontario one all season for some reason...you can't get the sweeter white ones from there now anyway, and I'm very picky). Unfortunately he was wrong about them being good, and my world collapsed a little, my heart tore at its tender seams, and I felt a bit spiritually lost.

Every last nectarine tasted like starch. It's true they weren't ripening properly in my frigid kitchen (1 degree celcius yesterday! That's madness) but they just turned to mush and went bad. There were a few that were almost trying to be flavourful, but they failed miserably...

But this post is not about nectarines. It's about fennel. Those too I found at Leopoldo's before I knew how crushed my heart could be by a man and his nectarines.

I have an ongoing love affair with fennel. I used to hate the anise flavour of the vegetable until I found a recipe a few years ago that said to roast it and then add a tiny, tiny bit of lemon juice and the natural sweetness of the vegetable comes out and the bitterness gets roasted away. I ate a whole fennel bulb that way and again nearly died of joy. I suppose I have a lot of near-death experiences with fruits and vegetables...

In Quebec this season the rain hasn't been right for fennel growing. I bought local, organic ones only once this summer and braised them with fibrous, wiry results (recipe #2 in my "Recipe For Disaster" cookbook?) AND they were really expensive! $3 or $3.50 for just one dwarfed heart.

But Leopoldo had a sale on. $5 for 3 of the big, juicy ones. I was sold. Even on the last organic farmers' market day of the season of Marché Fermier I chose to take up valuable granny cart space with three big bulbs of non-local fennel. That's how much I love these things.

So I decided to roast two of these guys according to my roasting bible in a recipe meant for pasta sauce, but which I would just have just with bread, and then I'd roast the third bulb according to my standard, simple roasted fennel with lemon recipe. Here's the first:

Roasted Fennel with Tomato (Pasta Sauce or Bread Topping or Sandwich Filling...or Snack)
2 bulbs fennel
1 head garlic (mmm...roasted garlic...)
1 tbsp fennel seeds (overkill, but nice)
2 tbsp olive oil
4 plum tomatoes, chopped (I used fresh green ones...bad idea! They weren't nearly sweet enough and they weren't plums, so the acidic, bitter juices got into the fennel and killed them in their over-heated sleep. You're also only supposed to end up with 2/3rds of a cup, but I had about a cup and a half of tomatoes to use up, so that's what went in...again, not a good idea. Try to cut the tomatoes evenly so they roast evenly, and again, smaller is better)
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
kosher salt (or other) and ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit. Cut the fennel bulbs (wash them first) through the core and into quarters. Then cut out the tough core of each. Finally slice the outer layers into 1/8" slices. It doesn't really matter how thickly you slice them. They'll just take more or less time to cook, but I find the thinner ones end up crisper and the bigger ones are more watery, so slimmer is better in this case. In a BIG baking sheet or roasting pan toss the fennel slices with everything else and spread it as thinly as possible in the pan.

Once the oven is preheated, roast the fennel for 35-45 minutes. Don't stir or turn unless it's looking as though it'll burn at any second and it's not quite done yet. Voila dinner.

If you want to make this into pasta sauce, cook some pasta, drain it and return it to the pot. Add the roasted mixture, scraping in all the delicious blackened bits. Add about 2 more tablespoons of olive oil, then tear a cup of fresh basil leaves from their stems and add those. To serve, toss in a little mozzarella or parmiggiano reggiano (please, please, please do not use pre-powdered "parmesan" cheese. You'll break my heart more than the nectarines and Leopoldo did).

You know, I was expecting the fennel to make up for the lacklustre nectarines, but again, I was a little disappointed. I mean, they weren't bad, but I think I cut them too thickly and they ended up too watery. I also think my tomatoes were too juicy (and I used too many), but really the fennel flavour should have still been strong and dreamy, and I should have fallen in love with the aroma from my kitchen. In and out, in and out...I know, it's a bad cycle.

Alas, food is fickle and my heart is not a plaything. I also feel as though maybe I deserved this for buying so much imported fruit and vegetables. Surely the flavour just couldn't be as good as what I could get organic and local. Maybe I'm the fickle one, since the next day I fell in love with eggplant all over again. Well, to be fair, I fell in love with eggplant in sesame oil, so I mostly fell in love with a quarter cup of sesame oil. That sponge-y local, organic eggplant just soaked it all up and caressed my broken heart (and stomach).