Ponche

Last year I wrote a blog post on Tejocote. I was intrigued with the mention that the fruit is used to make punch (ponche in Spanish), so I decided this year I would try making some for the holidays.

It turns out that the fruit and the punch is a significant part of the Christmas tradition in Mexico, and that the tejocote I bought a year ago was probably contraband: You can find out much more here http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/gf091212punch_party_tejocote in a recent episode of KCRW’s Good Food.

Well thankfully I didn’t have to break the law to make my ponche. One of my local grocery stores conveniently sells all of the key ingredients already assembled in a jar (insert picture).


I’m sure the quality isn’t as good as home made from fresh ingredients, but for my first time, I don’t mind taking a few shortcuts.

The main ingredients of Ponche are simple and probably easily available in central Mexico:
tejocote
guavas
sugar cane
cinnamon
alcohol

Of course variations are common and welcome. I added some clove, brandy, and tequila to mine. It’s good stuff.

I’ve had the pleasure of drinking mulled wine, Gluhwein, or Glogg at the holidays, the hot spiced wine which is traditional in various forms throughout northern Europe. On the first sip of my Ponche I recognized it’s really a close cousin of mulled wine, just a variation on the same theme really. It makes sense that different cultures would simply work with whatever is locally available. And if you listen to that Good Food episode, it seems that the whole idea originated in India (maybe a future blog post on that…!)

Happy Holidays! Cheers!

Smoked Apples

Want to try something other than pumpkin pie for dessert on Thanksgiving day? Try smoking some apples.

You can find lots of complicated smoked apple recipes on the web. I think simpler is better. Here's mine:

Chop the top off of a few apples, and core them. Make sure you keep them whole, you just want a deep hole in the center where the core was. Try to chop the tops off carefully so you can re-use them.

Melt some butter with some cinnamon, and pour the mixture into the apples. Then put the apple tops back on.

Here's the most complicated part of the recipe: take strips of foil and form them into rings, a little less than 2 inches in diameter.

Put the apples on the grill, and use the foil rings to keep them up right. Cook the apples at a low heat with some smoke, for about an hour. This works really well if you’ve smoked a turkey for your thanksgiving dinner and still have some hot coals left – the apples can smoke while you’re having dinner, and they should be ready in time for desert.

Serve them with a nice white dessert wine – anything sweeter than the apples themselves should work fine.

I'd rather have smoked apples than pumpkin pie with my thanksgiving dinner!

Fresh Dates

Fresh dates are one of the brief ephemeral pleasures of Southern California. I like the stage when they are almost fully ripe, but still very moist, with no astringy left. This is the Rutab stage. I once heard them described as like biting into a cloud.


From: http://fitfare.net/2006/07/20/exotic_fruit_fresh_dates/

Fresh dates can be eaten green or what is known at the kimri stage, where they have not ripened and have the consistency of a firm apple with a slightly sweet, green flavour. They are crunchy and slightly pithy near the seed.
If allowed to ripen, however, the water in the fruit evaporates and the sugars remain and become more concentrated, fresh dates darken, become soft (although not chewy), and the flavor intensifies exponentially. This is known as the rutab stage. Biting into a fresh, ripe date is like eating a spoonful of honey and sunshine.
In between the kimri and rutab stages is the khalal stage, where the date loses its astringency and starts to soften. Tamar is the dried stage where the dates are firm and dark, and most of the moisture in the fruit is gone.

Street Fruit: Kei Apple

Kei Apples are not common. This tree is growing next to a trash dumpster in Los Angeles.


The plant is native to Africa, and named after the Great Kei River in South Africa, which is probably where Europeans first encountered the fruit. You might find it growing as a garden plant in other mediterranean climates, but I have never seen them for sale in stores, and I have seen them sold at a farmers market only once.

The fruits are small and typically tart, but with an interesting complex flavour which reminds me of swedish cloudberries and ginger. If cooked with a little sugar the complex flavour is nice and palatable.

The interesting thing about Kei fruit is that it is the only cultivated fruit from the South African Cape floristic region, one of the six floristic regions on the planet. All of the other floristic regions on the planet have given us a variety of important fruits and vegetables, but I think the only one from the Cape region is the Kei Apple.

peachy epiphany

When I was younger, asking myself questions about religion, I pondered why all the come-to-jesus stories I was hearing always happened at the lowest point in someone’s life. If god is real, why can’t we find him at our highest point in life? You know, like some sort of an epiphany?

Then one hot sunny summer afternoon, high on a mountain in the Sierra Nevada, as I was eating a ripe juicy yellow peach during an lsd trip, I found god. It was one of the most exquisite moments of my life.

And peaches and god have been with me ever since. The lsd stayed in my youth, but that's ok, the peaches are just as good without it.

I'm not going to proselytize, except for this one point: if you don't think that eating a peach can be a sacred experience, then you probably haven’t ever had a really good peach.

I prefer mine yellow and soft and ripe, from the San Joaquin valley. And the best ones aren't found in grocery stores - try a farmer's market.

So get yourself a nice ripe one, and commune with the sacred before the summer is over!