Would you buy a fruit that sounds like a disease? If not, you’d better call the physalis by one of its many other names, perhaps Cape gooseberry or ground cherry. Sweet and tart, with an exotic perfume, these golden berries are enclosed in a papery straw-coloured calyx that adds to their mystique. Pull it back … Continue reading »
By: Cynthia David Special to the Star, Published May 16, 2013 If there were a design award for legumes, the fava bean would win hands down. Crack open a shiny green pod and you’ll understand why. Each bean is nestled in a velvety white bed attached to a jaunty nightcap that snaps off when you … Continue reading »
Move over broccoli, it’s fiddlehead season! These tightly coiled fronds, wrapped in copper-coloured kerchiefs that glint in the sun, are a sure sign of spring. Leave them a day or two and they’ll unfurl into an elegant fern any shade garden would love if they weren’t so invasive. Nick Secord, president of NorCliff Farms Inc., … Continue reading »
Toronto Star, April 19, 2013 While we quietly await the start of the Ontario asparagus season, expected around Mother’s Day, the rest of the world is celebrating these tasty spears with gusto. Residents of Stockton, California, are gearing up for the city’s annual asparagus festival starting April 26. Last year, cooks in Asparagus Alley deep-fried … Continue reading »
ripe papaya Published in Fresh Bites, Toronto Star April 5, 2013 I met Homero Levy de Barros on a lava-scorched plantation on Hawaii’s Big Island, where we gazed at rows of scrawny trees, green papayas clustered at the top like pendulous breasts shaded by a parasol of splayed palm leaves. I was a papaya newbie … Continue reading »
By: Cynthia David Published in the Toronto Star March 22, 2013 With its frothy green fronds and shapely body, fennel is the coquette of vegetables. Bite into the crisp white bulb, however, and its deep licorice flavour may knock your socks off. If you don’t like black licorice, chances are you won’t be serving this … Continue reading »
Published in the Toronto Star, March 8, 2013 Gnarled knobs of celery root may look a little scary, but beneath their pitted beige skin and tangle of rootlets lies a heart of culinary gold. If you’re eating local, this homely root is just the thing to add variety to end-of-winter meals with its potato-like texture … Continue reading »
When Montreal journalist Adam Leith Gollner held a cocktail party one slushy February, he asked everyone to bring a fruit they’d never tasted before. One guest arrived with a Vietnamese dragon fruit. “The size of an ostrich egg, it’s winged with flaming orange-green flaps,” Gollner writes in his terrific book The Fruit Hunters, now a … Continue reading »
I was on the phone the other day with California orange grower Dennis Johnston for a story. We talked about the 100 acres of Satsuma mandarins he sells with the stems and leaves on, an Asian tradition he says is becoming more widespread. One reason he likes selling his fruit this way, he says, is because retailers have … Continue reading »
Get your taste buds dancing! There’s just a week or two left to taste the 2012 crop of SweeTango apples, so keep your eyes peeled. This freckled red beauty with the snap-happy crunch and sweet-tart flavour, released in 2009 after more than 20 years of research and trials, is a cross between the now colossally … Continue reading »
