Fruit

Pretty pink grapefruits add zing and color to salads. Supreming citrus fruits (see the pictures on page 97) gives you seed- and rind-free sections that are ready to eat with no fuss, and the process releases a considerable amount of juice, which you’ll use as the base of the dressing. Once you have peeled the celery root, soak it in water with a little bit of lemon juice to keep it from turning brown.

Exotic, jewel-like, and demanding considerable labor to penetrate their maze of pulp, pomegranates are a ravishing winter treat. A constant on the Lucid Food cocktail menu during cold weather, this drink pairs well with food but also stands on its own. You can make the sangria the day before, but wait until the day you serve it to add the orange slices, as the pith can cause the drink to turn bitter. Use a cheap red wine; I prefer a rioja or a tempranillo.

This rich drink makes a filling breakfast. For a superb eggnog, add orange zest and rum, brandy, or bourbon. Before buying bananas, read about their production in “Must-Buy Organics,” on page 16. If you like nondairy milk, then blending your own nut milk, as described in this recipe, is much more economical than buying it premade. And unlike store-bought nut milk, it comes without added sugar, preservatives, and hard-to-recycle cartons. Homemade nut milk works beautifully for cereal, smoothies, baking, and simply drinking on its own.

After my company catered a party spotlighting foods from the state of Oregon, we were left with several pounds of fresh hazelnuts from the Willamette Valley, the capital of U.S. hazelnut production. We added the nuts to a flourless chocolate cake, and the result was this dark, rich confection with fruity undertones. Maple sugar, which is simply dehydrated maple syrup, is sold at most health food stores, but you may substitute any dry sugar. Serve this cake with vanilla-spiked whipped cream.

Choose your favorite fall fruit to adorn this sweet focaccia. The great Italian cook who taught me how to make it recommended throwing three tablespoons of water into the lower part of the oven (below the pan of focaccia) three times during the first ten minutes of baking. The steam created results in a crispier crust. Try it, but be careful not to extinguish the pilot light or soak the focaccia!

Fresh local grapes are an uncelebrated fall fruit, mostly because of their chewy skin and intrusive seeds. But grapes that aren’t ideal for snacking can be more fragrant and sweet than table grapes, and their acidity balances pleasingly with rich roasted chicken. Choose from any white, green, or red variety that’s native to your region. Depending on their sweetness, adjust the amount of honey in the recipe. You may use bottled, unsweetened white grape juice instead of fresh grapes. For a comforting cold-weather meal, serve with Watercress Mashed Potatoes (page 185) and Sweet Potato and Cranberry Cornmeal Biscuits (page 189).

Luscious persimmon fruits blow in and out of markets in late fall. They grow wild in North America—I’ve found them while foraging in Maryland—but the native species is small and astringent. The two kinds found in stores are cultivars from Asia. Hachiyas are oval-shaped and must be completely soft, all the way down to the base, before being eaten. Fuyus, which look like flat tomatoes, are eaten firm. If you can wait until it ripens, the Hachiya has more flavor, but the Fuyu works just as well in this recipe.

These irresistible ribs are an import from China that have been adopted—and adapted—by Japanese cooks. I like to prepare them with classic Chinese five-spice seasoning, because I love the rich fragrance and flavors of this mixture of cinnamon, anise seed, star anise, cloves, and ginger. But many cooks in Japan prefer to make the spareribs with simply sansho pepper or freshly ground black pepper and salt (use 1 teaspoon of either pepper with 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt). Try these different spice combinations to see which ones you like best!

Sea urchin, or uni in Japanese, is a favorite delicacy back home, one that can be enjoyed raw or mixed as a dressing for seafood. I love the creamy, rich texture and sweet flavor of sea urchin combined with the lemony butter sauce of this gnocchi dish. You can prepare the gnocchi ahead of time, if you’d like. Just toss it with 1 tablespoon olive oil and refrigerate for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 1 month.

This Southeast Asian–influenced dish is perfect for summer dining: it is light and refreshing, with tangy sweet-and-sour flavors. I love green papaya, an ingredient that has an appealing crunch and natural sweetness. Lemongrass, another one of my favorite Southeast Asian ingredients, adds a wonderful lemony fragrance. I cook with both at my restaurant.

The daikon and cucumber in this recipe are perfect for summertime: cooling, crunchy, and fresh tasting. The mitsuba, an herb that has a wonderful, delicate flavor that’s a bit like chervil, adds another refreshing note and doesn’t overpower. Add tangy yuzu and rich salmon and you have a balanced, nutritious, and delicious dish you can knock out in 15 minutes, from start to finish. If you’d like, you can substitute canned salmon for the fillets and avoid firing up the oven altogether.

A Southern tradition, chow-chow is a spicy, pickled fruit-and-vegetable relish that utilizes the produce at the end of the harvest. The fruit and vegetables can vary from recipe to recipe, and can include green tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, cabbage, carrots, and cucumber. Since Meme and Dede had a pear tree in their yard, they made chow-chow with pears. When I called Aunt Louise to ask for this recipe, she started reciting, “A peck of pears, peeled, cored, and sliced.” I laughed. Members of my family teasingly offer loving sentiments accompanied by the phrase, “A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.” But that is pretty much the extent of my definitive knowledge about a peck. However, a peck is an actual measurement: one-fourth of a bushel, which is about fifty pounds, depending on what is being measured. Bushel and peck baskets made of curved wooden slats with thin wire handles are still seen at farmer’s markets and farm stands all across the South.

There’s an ancient pear tree at the edge of Mama’s driveway. The pears have thick green skin, are very aromatic, and have an intense pear flavor. Most certainly a now-nameless heirloom variety, they appear to be similar to an Anjou or a Bartlett. Remember the canned pears often served with cottage cheese in the school cafeteria? Those are Bartlett pears. Anjou pears are distinctive in that they remain green even when fully ripe. Meme and Dede preserved the pears from the yard in quart containers packed in heavy syrup. Meme served them chilled for dessert and topped with grated Cheddar cheese for “salad.” One of our favorite treats was the deep-fried, half-moon-shaped pies she made with pureed pears and biscuit dough.

Dede loved pickled peaches and all manner of preserves. Every year, there was a garden of fruits and vegetables. In the summer, my family would put up quart upon quart of green beans, peaches, and canned tomatoes, and in the fall, golden pears in syrup and muscadine preserves. He’d seal the lids tightly with his strong hands and place them in rows on shelves in the basement. The name of this recipe reminds me of the tongue twister, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Dede would often recite similar silly phrases, play word games, and come up with whimsical names for foods: “cat head” was a large biscuit. “Wasp’s nest” was loaf bread. “Floppy motus” was gravy. And Jell-O was appropriately called “nervous pudding.”

When I see Jonagold apples at the market, I buy them, always thinking of my sister, Jona. My parents got a little creative with her name. It’s feminine for John, my father’s name. A blend between Jonathan and Golden Delicious, Jonagold apples are great for apple butter and applesauce. They have a tendency to soften in the refrigerator, so they are best used shortly after harvest.

Muscadines are wild American grapes native to the Southeast. Scuppernongs are a variety of muscadines. Both grapes have a tough, thick skin that ranges in color from deep purple to greenish bronze. There are scuppernong and Muscadine arbors more than fifty years old at my family’s home. The thick branches are gnarled and twisted, forming a large canopy instead of growing in a row like traditional grapes. Dede made muscadine wine and stored it in the basement. It was unfiltered and quite sweet. We recently found a bottle, at least twelve years old, that had aged and mellowed to a honey liqueur. The wine-making ended when Dede passed away, but Meme and Mama have always made jelly from the copious amounts of fruit. I think I was in first grade when I had my first taste of store-bought jelly. It was the ubiquitous Concord grape jelly of childhood, and I remember not liking it. I had never had jelly before that wasn’t homemade. My friend’s mother very likely thought I was either a complete brat or a complete hick. As children, my sister and I would stand for hours at the arbor, using both hands and mechanically eating the fruit like locusts. We’d squeeze the fruit into our mouths and spit out the seeds and bitter skins. Once, I reached into the arbor to pick a greenish globe and just as my fingers started to close on the fruit, it moved. My scuppernong was the head of a green snake. Scared out of my wits, I ran screaming into the house. Meme’s constant reminder about staying out of the bushes because of snakes had finally come true.

There’s an incredible cookware store in Paris called Dehillerin. When I lived in France as a poor student, I would scrimp and save so I could buy one copper pot a year. Even though times eventually became richer, I still stick to my rule of one pot a year. One summer at La Varenne, after many marathon sessions making preserves, I decided my one purchase would be a copper confiture pot. This special French pot is designed specifically for making jams and jellies. It is large and wide at the rim, providing a large surface area, which allows a mixture to evaporate and thicken quickly during cooking. Trouble was, I was purchasing this mammoth pot on my way home to the U.S. after many months in France; I had no room for it in my luggage. I’m not certain whether they would now consider it a possible weapon, but that summer I flew home with my shiny new confiture pot saddled snugly in my lap.

Blueberries bring to mind fingers stained purple-blue, fruity pies and cobblers, and warm, fresh-from-the-oven muffins. When buying blueberries, look for plump, firm, fresh berries that are a light, powdery, blue-gray. If refrigerated, fresh blueberries will keep for up to three weeks. When blueberries are in season, freeze them in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Once they are frozen solid, transfer to a freezer-safe container. This is a basic formula for making jam. I’ve added a small amount of candied ginger at the end. The underlying ginger flavor is subtle, but it really complements the blueberry.

There has seldom been a time in my life when a mason jar of this sauce wasn’t in a corner of my mother or grandmother’s refrigerator. The truth of the matter is, once you have had homemade you will go off the store-bought kind for good.

Each summer, any peaches that were not eaten, jellied, or canned were frozen. We would peel and slice the peaches and pack them into sealable plastic freezer bags. Most often, they later appeared as a topping for Meme’s Pound Cake (page 266). For a child, peach season was purgatory—it was so very hot—but I am sure Meme is smiling in heaven with satisfaction when she sees me practicing now what she taught me then. This soufflé uses the meringue method to rise, and the flavor is delicate and light. Frozen peaches may be used when peaches are not in season; simply defrost them before using.