Produce News for April 26, 2010

CORN (Monday, April 26): I’m a little bit giddy today. I’m a little bit excited today because we have new crop corn finally coming into the supermarket. You know we had that horrible January freeze in Florida which literally wiped Florida out for 60 to 90 days. But now, Florida growers are finally starting to get their early spring crop of sweet corn from re-planted fields. Mexico, of course, lost 50% of their crop because of cold and rain. With Florida and Mexico having trouble, that’s why Corn was virtually nonexistent over the past few months. But now, we are finally getting beautiful summer sweet corn not only from Florida and also the desert of California. Thank you Coachella Valley growers finally bringing in some beautiful sweet corn, both yellow varieties and white varieties. Now remember, I’ve often said there’s only one reason to heat up corn. And what’s that reason? To melt the butter you put on it. So here’s what I suggest. Corn is so sweet you don’t even need to heat it up. Just go ahead and put the butter right in the microwave. Melt the butter, and then get out your corn and smother it with butter.
KIWI FRUIT (Tuesday, April 27): You know, it’s important to know where the kiwi fruit is coming from this time of year. You see, California andItaly are just ending their season. Now it’s important to know that because their fruit, oh my goodness, is really nice and ripe, and they ripen up so quickly. They will over ripen very quickly, before you have a chance to use them. However, we are starting with new crop kiwi fruit out of Chile. I know Chile had that huge earthquake just a few weeks ago, but their growers have a super crop. One of the first things you will notice…the feel rock hard. It feels like granite. So here’s what I need for you to do. I need for you to buy your kiwi fruit a little bit earlier than you normally would if you’re going to serve it in a salad, a fruit salad. Buy them well in advance and ripen them properly. Please be patient with them. Give this new crop Kiwifruit a little extra time to ripen. Put them in a brown paper bag or put them in a shoebox. Whatever you do, make sure you keep them covered. Don’t keep them in open air. If you keep them in open air, the Kiwifruit has no natural oils on it, so the open air will actually cause them to dehydrate before they ever ripen. So make sure you enclose them. They will ripen up perfectly though…if you are patient.
TOMATO (Wednesday, April 28): Well, you did know that April is Florida tomato month. This is the month we should have been celebrating with all kinds of Florida tomatoes, but guess what? Mother Nature took care of that. Holy cow! Remember back in January, early January, we had like two straight weeks in Florida of record cold temperatures. It was like one of the worst freezes they had in like a century. Well, that really affected all the tomato crops up until now. Finally we are getting some wonderful tomatoes out of Florida, also Mexico, and the California desert has just now kicked in. So up until now we’ve been paying some very, very high prices for tomatoes whether it’s a Roma tomato, cherry tomato, grape tomato, regular slicing tomato …very, very high prices, but now thank goodness you can walk in and you can go over to that tomato section. You can actually buy tomatoes and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg now. So…it’s time once again to enjoy tomatoes…on that BLT.
SWEET POTATO (Thursday, April 29): Hey, the year was 1803. It cost $15 million. It was the Louisiana Purchase. Oh, my goodness, and thank goodness France sold it so cheaply. Thank your Sweet Potatoes because we now have Louisiana State University. That place is ground zero for Sweet Potatoes. It’s there that the world of Sweet Potatoes was changed forever. It’s there where Yams were created. Up until the early 1900s, the only Sweet Potato was that whiteish variety. It was pretty lackluster in color. Lackluster in flavor. But then in the early 1900’s some professors atLouisiana State University started playing with sweet potatoes and said, “Let’s get some color in it.” They said, “Let’s actually have a Sweet Potato with flavor.” These professors at Louisiana State University said, “Let’s create a Sweet Potato that actually tastes sweet.” What a novel idea. So they changed the whole world of Sweet Potatoes. They gave the Sweet Potato color, sugar and flavor. And they gave this new Sweet Potato a new name…a Yam. Beautiful yams…just a variety of sweet potato
MINT (Friday, April 30): Those thundering hooves will take off tomorrow. The city is Louisville, Kentucky, right along the Ohio River, and the place…yeah, let’s go to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby. If you’re going to be looking at horses at the Derby, you’re going to be sipping some mint juleps. Well, the best mint juleps, start with the best bourbon…and of course, the best Mint. Picking out the best Mint is actually pretty simple. Look…at the leaves. Make sure those leaves have no decay or brown spots. You see, it’s the leaves that you use. It’s the oil content in the leaves that you need for Mint Juleps. The more oil, the more flavor. When there is decay and brown spotting, oil content has been minimized in those leaves. Most Mint Julep recipes actually calls for putting some bourbon in a glass and then taking a spoon and crushing the Mint leaves in the bourbon. There’s a fancy word for that called “muddling.” Basically, your are crushing the leaves and breaking the cell structure of that leaf so you release all of that oil content…the mint flavor in the mint juleps.