Garlic chives and the flower of squash, the first for sweet, fragrant, cold soup and the second for salads
Pawpaw, gongura leaves and hardy orange.
Gongura (Hibiscus sabdariffa, south India): tart-flavoured leaves
for sauteing with garlic and ginger and then pureeing with roasted tomatoes and freezing for winter soups, sauces and such. Etc.
Pawpaw fruit (Asimina triloba).
Pawpaw: a small, deciduous tree native to the eastern US and Canada; with huge leaves and sweet, custard-textured fruit which falls in early Autumn and survives not long.
The fruit can be eaten quite decorously but not by children…
Hardy orange (Citrus trifoliata or Poncirus trifoliata), native of China, Korea, Japan. Not clear to the cognoscenti whether this fruit is a citrus or not. It does not have sections.
A bush grows in Winterthur, Delaware with thorns as lethal as that of the flowering quince. It drops its fruits now.
Very bitter flesh and skin,
it nevertheless has a deep and pungent fragrance between oranges and Chanel No. 5.
This fruit was brought to our Sunday farmers’ market by a woman who has a big bush in her back garden.
She gave most of the fruit to a renowned local chef who grates the peel in tiny amounts onto one dish or another ‘pour amuser la bouche’.
I have thrown the peel alone into vodka to see if its first sip will preserve the fragrance.
Any longer, and the drunken peel will embitter the vodka.
For winter comfort to the eyes and nose only. Probably.
Maxwell Over, oil on canvas, 1992-93.
Ronald Bateman, American born Wales, UK 1947. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia
Thank you for sharing!